


Lifelong Local Foreigner

by asuralucier



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, American Gods Inspired, Angsty Road Trip AU, Death, Depression, Gen, Gratuitous references to song lyrics and titles, Grief, Healing, M/M, Nature's cunning ways AU is that a thing, On the Road Inspired, Wes Anderson Inspired, discussion of suicide, navel gazing, slow burn but honestly probably more preslash than anything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-07-07 18:00:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15913398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: After Elio nearly kills a man, he offers to buy the man a coffee. It’d seemed only fair.(Written after watching and listening tothis500 times.)





	1. The Only Living Boy

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going through a bit of a hard time at the moment, but writing helps. For the time being, this is my only project but I will see it through unlike the other times when life managed to throw me one. Please do enjoy, and thank you for reading! :) References will be posted in the end notes of each chapter.

New York is a strange city. If the throes of cinema are to be believed, the the city is a schizophrenic one at best. It caters to the whimsiest of whims and the can become too, the stuff of nightmares. If you’d like to fall in love, buy a cup of espresso and wait your turn. If you’d think yourself adventurous and want to, say, get wrapped up in conspiracy, in espionage, in a fanciful bank heist or even one of those murder plots that only seem plausible unspooling and sprawling inside the head of a _novelist_ , the Big Apple has got a place for you. The city also bolsters plenty of possibilities for the places it isn’t. You know, for the people who want to get the fuck out. For the souls that have choked on the miasma in the air for too long. 

After Elio nearly kills a man, he offers to buy the man a coffee. It’d seemed only fair. The man accepts, with the proviso that wherever they go must have outdoor seating. 

The man says: “I’m dying for a cigarette.” 

And then he smiles, shrugs off the words, tries again, “I’m sorry. That’s inappropriate.” The man’s smile is mesmerizing. His teeth are white and perfect; the line of his mouth is uncertain, but inviting. Elio could have looked at his mouth all day like it’s suddenly become his new favorite work of art. 

Elio doesn’t ask if the man knows the city, he’s not been here terribly long himself but he’s since learned that it’s a bit of a hit and miss. Most people don’t have enough time in their lives, so they take offense. 

The man looks like he’s got time. It’s not something that they tell you, because the _lack of time_ intrinsically makes philosophy more urgent and even practical, but death in fact makes us realize that we haven't got anything but time. Elio takes the man to a coffeehouse stuck next to a gallery on Fifth Ave. Despite it being nearly noon, there isn’t a line and they are seated right away. The man’s fingers are shaking as he takes out a neat packet of tobacco, and some skins. He drops his lighter. Elio picks it up. 

The man says, “Thanks.” 

Some more observations about the man: he is tall, but folds into his chair naturally enough. Like he’s used to living with such inconveniences he no longer thinks about them. He’s got gel in his hair, but it is a windy day. He is wearing a neatly pressed cream-white shirt, a sedate tie, a dark navy suit, a rumpled pocket-square and a buttonhole with a single white rose that looks a little wilted from all the excitement. That means the rose is real and not made of paper. 

The man can’t seem to stop shaking. He’s spilling tobacco everywhere. 

“Can I help?” Elio asks. “I do know how. I learned from my father.” 

The man looks at him, takes him in, “That’s a weird thing to learn from one’s father.” 

“My father was a strange man,” Elio agrees. “I sometimes feel as if all my cells are bent.” 

“Was?” The man gathers up the bits of spilt tobacco the best he can and pushes the pouch and the skins over to Elio’s side of the table. He makes room, reaching for Elio’s side plate and his serviette and stacks them on top of his own. The waiter drops by to take their order, and since the man seems uncertain again, Elio takes the lead. 

“How do you like your coffee?” 

“At this point, I think I’d take anything strong.” 

While Elio doesn’t think that strong coffee is going to help with the shakes, he doesn’t want to argue. He orders two espressos with whipped cream and also a strudel. 

The man says, “I’m afraid I’m not hungry.” 

“I thought you might like to eat in the name of comfort, not hunger,” Elio says. “People who eat just because they are hungry must have next to imagination at all.” 

“That your father too?” 

“No, that’s me. I have a wild imagination, and I can’t seem to gain any weight.” Elio looks down at himself. For the most part, his body resembles a sapling, and his hair, with its unruly curls are practically leaves, greening and starved for spring. He needs a haircut. “Also, my father is dead. My mother too. I’m just telling you now, so you don’t wonder.” 

The man, because he’s been imbued with some manners, opens his mouth, closes it again. Elio licks the side of the skin to seal up the cigarette. The man swallows, says, “I’m.” 

“Don’t say you’re sorry. It’s _fait accompli_. People die.”

“Wow,” the man lights his cigarette. A tension seems to lift from him right off his first inhale. “I hate my folks, and I don’t think I could be that zen if they died.” 

“Mom and Dad were both very zen,” Elio says. “I’ve lived with it for years, nearly all my life. It’s not a big deal.” 

The strudel and coffee come and Elio watches the man take in the golden brown pastry, the accompanying pot of thick cream. It even smells like it’s fresh out of the oven, “...Tell you what. I’d skim a bit of that.” 

Elio flags down the waiter to ask for another fork. 

 

Two unlikely protagonists sit at a coffeehouse sharing strudel. It sounds like the beginning of a bad movie.

Between them, they’ve got: two dead parents, two not very likeable parents, a lot of zen, the shakes, some time, a budding headache, a mild death wish since waylaid by strudel and good espresso. Maybe. 

“My name is Oliver,” says the man, chewing with his mouth open but he still looks attractive. He -- Oliver -- couldn't shake it (the attractiveness) if he'd tried, “I’ve not been well. I ran away from my wedding. Just so you don’t wonder.” 

“Are you making fun of me?” Elio eyes the man. Oliver. What does he know about the name Oliver? Not much, but Elio does know about olive trees, that they are meant to symbolize fruitfulness (possibility especially in the biblical sense). If you believe, as Elio doesn’t, that Oliver is a cognate of the Germanic _Olaf_ , then Oliver is only possibility, as he belongs to someone else. Olaf connotes an heirloom, an inheritance. You are not yourself but part of somebody else. There’s Dickens, too of course. _Please sir, I want some more._ Please please please (sir), won't you make me more myself. 

“I’m not,” Oliver says. “Can I have some more of that strudel? It’s very good, I can feel my imagination expanding already. It’s going to beat my expanding waistline in no time.” 

“You _are_ making fun of me,” Elio says. Then, “...Yeah all right, have the rest.” 

Oliver sips his coffee, noisily. Noisily enough that the couple who have just sat down one table over abandon their menus to stare. Oliver doesn’t seem to have noticed. He sucks again on his cigarette and shrugs, “If that’s what you think, I can’t stop you. I’m just some guy. But I’m not. I just already like the way you say things.” 

Elio says, “Do you?” It’s a bit of an odd compliment to be receiving from ‘some guy’ but he takes it in stride. “How do I say things?” 

“Honest and no bullshit,” Oliver says with his mouth full. He swallows, “The only honest boy left in New York.” 

Elio thinks, “Isn’t that a song?” 

“That’s ‘The Only Living Boy in New York,’” Oliver corrects him. “Simon and Garfunkel.” 

“I’m not living,” Elio says. “I’m just walking around and waiting. I should have gotten that. Honest wouldn’t be in a song title anyway. Sounds too preachy or folksy.” He dislikes both. 

“Yeah?” Oliver gulps the rest of his coffee. “Something else we have in common. Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of the fic is snagged from Why? by Torpedo or Crohn’s. Warning just in case: I read the lyrics before I listened to the song and didn’t realize it was rap. 
> 
> The Only Living Boy in New York is a song that everyone should know. 
> 
> The cafe that Elio takes Oliver to is Cafe Sabarsky and I want to go here. I don’t think there is an outdoor area (thanks, Google Earth) but I took some poetic license.


	2. The Parched Earth

Oliver follows him back to his car once Elio pays the bill. He doesn’t ask if he can get in, he just does. Elio doesn’t tell him to get out, either. Elio starts, then stalls the car again. 

“...Should I be driving you anywhere?” Something about Oliver screams Brooklyn, but Elio has never been too heavy into where the affectations of people are from, So many things are lost in translation now, that pressing one’s personhood onto buildings, onto stray cracks of rough concrete seems inherently wasteful. There isn’t even that much of a person left over, or so Elio has been taught to think. 

“Where are you going?” Oliver asks. 

“Out west,” Elio says. “I’m going to find some gold.” 

The joke is not particularly funny inasmuch as it isn’t a joke at all, but Oliver’s mouth twitches anyway, “Funny. Most people would fly. Saves time, no?” 

“We’ve just established I am not most people,” Elio fixes him with a look. “At least, I think we’ve established that. I’ve got some time. I would rather drive.” 

Oliver shrugs, “What the hey.” He still doesn’t get out of the car. 

They slowly and agonizingly rejoin the post-lunchtime traffic. The place is crawling with tourists but Elio doesn’t kill anyone.

He gets on I-84 eventually, while Oliver fidgets with his buttonhole. Having removed it from his lapel, Elio watches as the man rolls down the window. 

“ -- Please don’t do that. That’s littering.” 

“So it is,” Oliver drifts away from the window, but his fingers pull apart the rose petal by petal anyway, and then he spreads out the discombobulated petals over his knees. 

“Here,” Elio gestures because he can’t think of anything else, “Look in the glove box. There’s something in there you might like.” 

Oliver sifts long fingers through Elio’s papers, some half-used tissues packets, and then he lights up when he spies a flask. The flask is chrome, of average size, and perhaps most importantly, full to the brim. Oliver uncaps it and sniffs as if he’s scoping out rat poison. 

“Whiskey? It is very sweet.” 

“Whiskey’s boring,” Elio’s mouth lifts at one side, “The last of my Remy Martin. I was saving it.” 

Oliver looks set to swallow the whole contents of the flask in one gulp. He immediately looks guilty, “Isn’t that expensive?” 

“Not if you have money,” Elio shrugs. “I have a little money.” 

Oliver assents, “You did buy me eight dollar coffee.” 

“And ten dollar strudel,” that seems worth bringing up, seeing as Oliver did eat most of it. 

“And ten dollar strudel,” Oliver amends himself, but doesn’t sound embarrassed. “Are you some kind of, I don’t know, prodigal son or something? A little prince?” 

“A little prince. Are you serious?” 

“As a terminal illness,” Oliver sips at the flask. He caps it again and tucks it away in the glove box. “Modern runaway princes are a thing, aren’t they?” 

“Only in films or perhaps in a bright imagination.” 

“We both know you’ve got that. I bet your noggin is hoppin’. Come on, out with it.” 

“You don’t even know my name.” Elio supposes he could have volunteered it soon after Oliver had given his, but the timing hadn’t seemed right. Not long after that, the moment had passed entirely and hadn’t since returned. 

Oliver shrugs, “I don’t think names are important. They detract from people, more than anything.” 

“Is that why you gave me your name?” Elio glances at him. “... _Is_ Oliver even your real name?” Elio once published a poem containing the words “sex dice” in a student rag. He’d used a _nom de plume_ for the occasion. It hadn’t been raunchy enough to warrant the use of one, but what Elio thinks about sex is his own business. 

(His father had done something similar once, spurred on by cowardice rather than a desire to maintain any personal secrets. If anyone ever asked him if he was anything like his father, Elio would have demurred, out of respect for Samuel. They’d shared nothing but an initial, the E. that denoted his father’s middle name stood for Ethan. Long-lived. Long-lived for his own sake, not like his son, who felt only long-lived because the sun rose in the mornings without his saying so.) 

It probably helps too, that Elio has never wanted to be anyone else, not even anybody fictional or what have you, the usual stuff of juvenile fantasia. Elio’s friends, mostly faceless university chums now, have always claimed that this is by far the weirdest thing about him. 

“Would you like to see my identification?” Oliver gathers up the loose rose petals and puts them in the left pocket of his suit jacket. He looks prepared to reach for something else, too. 

“Not particularly.” Elio turns his eyes back to the road. The car directly in front of his is from out of state, Minnesota, practically nowhere. Elio has never been to Minnesota except once, when his father had given a plenary lecture at a conference on the author Sherwood Anderson. The paper’s title: “Nature’s Cunning Ways: Finding Hope in the Grotesque in _Winesburg, Ohio_ ”, though his father made it a point usually to not go anywhere near the twentieth century. The way he put it, was that there were already too many people wrestling with the tragedy of the recent past that Samuel didn’t feel any need to join in the fray.

But hope is another story. Hope has been trampled all over in favor of its more slant-eyed, complicated, traumatized cousins. Samuel Perlman would happily enough go to bat for hope. Its memory, its legacy, its continued existence into today. 

Elio shakes the thought out of his head, “I’m not the police. Unless someone is after you. Are you wanted, somewhere?” 

“Yes,” Oliver says, looking pointedly away from him. “But I don’t think it’s anything you have to worry about.” 

 

They stop for some gas in picturesque Honesdale, Pennsylvania (population: 4,240, _The Birthplace of American Railroads_ ) two hours and a bit later. It’s not really en route to anywhere, but they’ve ended up somewhere west of where they were. Oliver offers to wash his windows. He sounds serious. 

“...Are you saying my car is dirty?” Elio keeps one eye on the meter. He’s got money, and he’s got the time, but the thing about _having_ is that one shouldn’t squander. 

For someone his age, Elio likes to think he takes all right care of his car. It’s nothing showy, a 2012 tan Corolla that Elio and his father had bought off of a graduating senior during the last of Elio’s campus visits before he’d committed to the university properly. The senior had been looking to move to the Bay Area right after graduating to work for Google. Now that he had a proper adult job, he (the senior) wasn’t going to be caught dead driving a car that was worth less than five figures. It’d seemed perfectly sensible when the guy first said it, but the more Elio turned the sentiment in his head, the more senseless it’d become. It was precise and exacting, because the guy knew what he wanted, but it’d still been senseless, all the same. 

Oliver presses a thumb into the glass. He leaves a clear print, which might prove useful if it ever comes out that the guy is in fact, wanted. Elio starts. 

“Your car is pristine, but I gotta earn my keep somehow.” Oliver’s mouth quirks up. “Don’t roll your eyes, I’m on it.” 

“I’m going to pay inside,” Elio says, once he’s locked the gas nozzle back where it ought to be, “...Please don’t do anything else to fuck up my car, okay?” 

“Like what?” Oliver has already moved to wet one of the provided squeegees in the also provided soap. He performs the whole movement in one broad swooping go, and some of the soap splashes onto the hood. 

Elio eyes the splotch, “...That.” 

Oliver clears his throat and tucks his chin neatly into his neck, “Relax, Sundance, I ain’t gonna hurt your car. I gon take real good care of it.” Then in his normal voice, Oliver says. “I grew up in Texas. Practically washed cars for a living when I was a kid. I mean, for pennies, but still.” 

“...Right,” Elio chews the inside of his cheek. “I’ll leave you to it, Butch.” 

 

As they pull away from the gas station and pull back out on the road, Oliver asks if they can find a thrift store. 

“A thrift store?” Elio looks him up and down. They’re at a four-way stop sign and there are no other cars in sight. It’s as if the town is asleep. 

“You’re looking at me languishing in my worldly possessions.” Oliver gestures down at himself. “If I think about it anymore, I’ll get depressed, Sundance. I won’t be able to safeguard the propriety of your Remy Martin.” 

“Were you not depressed before?” Elio asks. “...Are you never going to ask me my name?” 

“You know,” Oliver takes to picking at an invisible scratch near his wrist and to avoiding Elio’s gaze entirely. “I never know what a person hopes to accomplish when he asks two completely different questions. It’s not like I can give one neat little answer and make you feel better.” 

Elio gets the distinct feeling that Oliver is talking to someone else about somebody else. He shrugs, “...My name is Elio. There, we’re back down to just one question.” 

“Then yes, I was depressed before,” Oliver looks at him again, “ -- What kind of name is Elio? I’ve never heard of it.” 

“Italian, Spanish, Greek, if you want to be really highfalutin. I only know of one other Elio. That’s a lie. Two, kind of.” 

“Shoot,” Oliver says. The undertone of ‘whatever’ in his voice has lifted up to a register of vague interest. 

Elio starts the car again. He has never been to Honesdale and he’s going to stick to the illusion that he has time, for as long as it lasts. If curated carefully, most such illusions last much longer than they are meant to. “One’s a writer. He wrote an anti-fascist novel in the early 40s, inspired, oddly, by Hemingway. Hemingway was apparently so flattered by the attention that he acquiesced to write the introduction to the U. S. edition. It’s about a guy who travels around using the railroads of Sicily and regains consciousness.” 

Oliver raises a neat brow, recently plucked, “Wasn’t he...not really into Jews? Hemingway, I mean.” 

“Just because one isn’t really into Jews doesn’t mean one can’t be anti-fascist. One doesn’t always have to follow the other,” Elio doesn’t look at Oliver because he is a proponent of road safety, but he hopes to convey atmospheric unhappiness the best he can with his periphery. “That’s rather reductivist.” In some circles, perhaps even worse, but Elio doesn’t feel like he needs to say. 

Oliver looks surprised, and then he works to pop the first few buttons of his shirt. In the tangle of his fingers and the fabric, Elio spies a thin chain attached to a Star of David pendant. Then Oliver tucks it away again as if he is secretly ashamed, “Ah. So it is. Sometimes I. I guess I’m still coming back to life; I’m still recovering my consciousness like your railway boy. Give me a minute.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is a reference to Hemingway’s introduction of Elio Vittorini’s 1941 novel _Conversations in Sicily_. Hemingway wrote: "I care very much about Vittorini's ability to bring rain with him when he comes, if the earth is dry and that is what you need." 
> 
> [This](http://www.umich.edu/~eng217/student_projects/anderson/) is a great starting resource if you'd like to find out more about Sherwood Anderson.
> 
> Railway metaphors abound! Honesdale, PA is a real town whose population is possibly around 4,240. The town is home to the first commercial locomotive, _The Stourbridge Lion_ circa 1829. We’re all going places. 
> 
> Recommended listening: more _Simon and Garfunkel_ for your listening pleasure: The Boxer
> 
> Thank you for all the kind words and kudos.


	3. Find Somebody

They find a secondhand shop on Main Street. The woman sitting by the register is chewing contently on a sandwich that smells strongly of mayonnaise. She doesn’t seem like she’s used to having patrons at this point in the afternoon, but she swallows and waves them in anyway. When she smiles, there’s a piece of watercress stuck between her teeth. 

“Our men’s section is very small; we’re always after donations,” she says, gesturing leaving only a half-inch of space between her fingers. “But you’re welcome to take a look around. -- You boys from out of town?” 

“I go to Columbia,” Elio offers. 

“My niece goes to Columbia,” the woman says. “She studies something with viruses. It’s very cutting edge.” 

“Virology?” Oliver says. Like he and Elio are friends who have known each other for years. Sometimes, they even finish each other’s sentences. 

“That’s the one,” the woman smiles at him. “I can never remember.” 

The men’s section is indeed tiny ( _tiny_!) and Oliver has some trouble digging out things that might fit him. The ordeal turns out more funny than depressing. Outside of practical sizing issues, flannel doesn’t seem to be Oliver’s thing. It shoves too much color into the man all at once and makes him looks absurd. 

“Stop laughing,” Oliver grouses. At the moment, he is halfway into a wrinkled flannel, but also unlikely to get any further. 

There is something tickling at the edge of Elio’s sternum but he is pretty sure it isn’t humor the way Oliver is thinking. “I’m working on my poker face. Honest.” 

“I hope you never play poker,” Oliver says. 

“Poker was more my father’s thing.” 

Oliver looks down at the flannel he’s managed to extricate from his arm, “And not your mother’s thing?” 

Elio shrugs, “She preferred the fruit slots. Mom liked colors, floral prints, different shades of orange and peach. Some pinks too, but she was more picky about those.” 

Oliver fixes him with a long look, “...I can’t tell if you’re kidding.” 

“Like I said,” Elio rolls one shoulder and turns away. “Still working on my poker face.” 

 

After five more minutes of rummaging through everything, Oliver manages to find an old XL-sized sweatshirt with the local high school logo -- _Go Hornets!_ \-- emblazoned across the front. It is loose on his person when he tries it on, but at least his arms don’t stick out too awkwardly. After paying five dollars for the sweatshirt, Oliver appears to think it over and decides on something; a tint of resolve straightens his spine. He pulls off his jacket and the dress shirt. Underneath, he is only wearing a white t-shirt, and Oliver quickly pulls the sweatshirt over his head again. 

“This is probably all kinds of out of order,” Oliver says. “But can I donate these? It’s a full getup from Hugo Boss. I’ve only worn them the once.” Then, a little bit sheepishly, “I can throw in a twenty or something for dry cleaning. Sorry it’s caked in cologne.” 

Elio looks down at Oliver’s trousers, “ ‘S not really a set if you’re still wearing those. Imagine showing up at an interview or something _sans pantalon_.” He can’t exactly help himself. Something else Oliver has probably not thought through too much, was that the while the donation in question is possibly meaningful for the man, its meaning doesn’t carry any real weight in the practical world. At least, Oliver’s suit is at least one good tailoring job away from returning to functional society, if not two. 

“Ha. You drive a hard bargain,” Oliver snorts. 

“Yeah, and you’re awful at puns,” Elio returns. 

The woman looks between them, her smile perched somewhere between amusement and bemusement, “...This is absolutely not a ploy to make you take off your pants,” she says. “But we do have some stock that we haven’t inventoried yet. We do stock on Wednesdays.” She pairs this information with a throwaway shrug, “You’re welcome to look through that.” 

 

“Don’t. You. Dare.” 

“Don’t I dare what?” 

Oliver has offered to drive; Elio should really refuse. The man isn’t on his insurance and there’s the niggling thought that he _doesn’t_ know Oliver’s last name. Or even that Oliver is in possession of a valid driving license. But the man isn’t shy about handing over his identification, which indeed is a driving license due to expire in March of next year. 

And Oliver doesn’t live in Brooklyn. 

“Don’t you dare laugh,” Oliver says as he jerks almost roughly off the curb. “I can see how you’re holding it in.” 

Going through the thrift shop’s stocks, they’d dredged out a pair of forest green corduroys that miraculously came to only an inch or two above Oliver’s ankles. But next to his black-and-red school sweatshirt and his slightly scuffed brown Oxfords, there’s something about this whole outfit, this whole getup that appears nearly clownish.

Elio exhales, letting out a bark of a breath, “I’m sorry. It’s just. We probably should have gotten you some shoes. Some real fly sneakers.” 

Oliver makes a noise in his throat, “Real fly sneakers. Who even talks like that?” 

“My mother illustrated children’s books,” Elio says. “Sometimes, she’d read things to me, and watch my face. She says I was an inspiration. _Alexander was having a no good, very bad day. But at least he had his real fly sneakers._ ” 

“Your parents sound like a thousand people,” Oliver says but he also looks like he wants to laugh. 

“That was probably the thing that I admired most about them,” Elio looks out the window. After a moment, he reaches for his flask in the glove box. “It’s not such a bad thing.” 

Oliver makes a noncommittal noise, “Wish I could do that.” 

“...What?” Elio carefully touches the lip of the flask and licks the drop of liquor from his skin. “Be my parents?” 

“ _No_ ,” Oliver lurches to a stop in front of a stoplight. “That’s. Okay, don’t be weird.” 

“If that’s how you drive, you’re not allowed,” Elio says. “The light’s green. You can pull over there.” 

They began to move forward and Oliver makes a point of not pulling over. After about ten minutes or so, they pass a sign signalling the interstate again. “I don’t drive like this no. For one thing this is not my car. For another thing, this...” Oliver chews faintly on his bottom lip, “I meant the multiple persons thing.”

“You’re doing it now,” Elio says. He is still holding the flask in his hands; if he turns it, around and around again, he can almost hear the inviting trickle of cognac just waiting to be drunk against the backdrop of white noise coming from the engine. Elio’s mind might have settled on zen, but his body has not quite caught up. “Look at what you’re wearing.” 

Oliver sneaks a look down at himself, “Like a welfare kid. Well, except for the shoes.” 

“Maybe you were a street smart kid, stole the shoes. You knew they were going to get you places.” 

Oliver takes the road that leads them back on I-80, and Elio doesn’t protest, “I look like a rodent who chewed his way through all sorts of fancy shit.” A pause, “...I don’t know who I am.” 

Elio tips back more cognac and puts the flask back into the glove box, “That’s half the fun, or so I’m told. Your clothes aren’t you, Oliver. Don’t you already feel better?” 

 

It’s nearly eight in the evening when they arrive in Pittsburgh. Elio doesn’t particularly like cities, which is both a paradox and not really considering that the first thing that he’d ever learned about Oliver was that he was going to get out of the city. Either as just a body dead in the middle of the road, or as a wanted man trying to escape the constraints of his little life, it could have gone either way. And yet it’s because the details of his little life seem so insurmountable to him, is why the end result hadn’t much mattered. 

“It’s a shame I can’t take you anywhere good,” Oliver says as the streets fill up with evening traffic. “Wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something like this. However it makes me not myself.” 

Elio looks at him, “So now you’re taking me places in my car?” 

“Why not? I know this city. Don't you want _le grand tour_?” On Oliver's tongue, _tour_ becomes _too_.

“You do?” Nothing about Oliver should surprise Elio. That is the privileged purview of one stranger to another, but portending the unexpected is itself distinct from surprise. 

“Yeah. Six years of soul sucking grad school. Carnegie Mellon.” 

“In what?” Elio asks that, instead of some variation of, _and not an Ivy?_ He is trying to relegate those sorts of thoughts and assumptions to their rightful vestigial place at the back of his skull. 

“Economics, Classics to keep me sane back in the day.” 

“‘Call no man happy, until he is dead.’” 

“That’s good,” Oliver’s mouth flits upwards again. “Still one of the sanest things anyone has ever said. But I prefer ‘nothing is permanent except change.’ It has nothing of death in it.” 

Elio thinks, “...Did you want to die when you ran out into the road?” 

“... _Wow_ ,” Oliver takes to chewing his bottom lip as he sucks in a deep breath. “That’s a little.” 

“Consider it quid pro quo,” Elio shrugs. “You can ask me something and try to get to me. Here, ask.” He spreads his hands. “I’ll even answer first.”

Oliver taps one hand thoughtfully on the wheel, “All right. What’s out west?” 

Elio looks down at his hands, “My mother’s body.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title taken from Kodaline’s wonderful All I Want, which works on several levels, I think. 
> 
> More notes on Pittsburgh to come, but for now, it’s enough that you know the city as the “City of Bridges,” -- for its whopping 446 bridges. Apparently Pittsburgh has more bridges than Venice. The city also links the East Coast and the Midwest. 
> 
> “Call no man happy until he is dead,” is Herodotus (as shamelessly stolen from Gaiman’s _American Gods_ ). Oliver’s quote of course comes from Heraclitus.
> 
> As always, a big thank you!


	4. Said the Joker to the Thief

For a long time, Oliver doesn’t say anything. The silence that descends in the car is rich with Schrödinger's possibility. It swallows up all the _could haves_ , _would haves_ , and _sorrys_. Elio especially hates “sorry.” He sometimes still drowns in it. When the silence gains a certain piercing volume, usually in the dead of night, he still jerks awake in a cold sweat. Already, Zen works a hearty sixty-hour week, sticking closely to Elio’s amygdala whenever he needs it. He can hardly blame it for wanting some time off. The thing about a man living in his own head is just that: it saves anyone else from living there alongside him. 

“Now what I have to say doesn’t seem fair,” Oliver says, finally. “I just.” 

Elio shuts his eyes, “Don’t say it. Just answer the question, like we agreed.” 

There’s another pause, “...Would it make you feel better?” 

The silence grows even fatter between them now; Elio opens his eyes again, just in time to see Oliver’s Adam’s apple bounce as the other man swallows. He suddenly feels the need to assure Oliver, “I like rules.” 

“You don’t give much away, do you?” 

“I have been nothing but honest,” Elio shrugs. “You practically said so yourself.” 

“My answer is -- I don’t know. I don’t understand how a person could decide so definitively to end his own life. I’m sure it was at the back of my head, somewhere, to be dealt with later. But…” Oliver trails off again. “I don’t know.” He shrugs almost forcefully, as if to instill in himself that he indeed _doesn’t_ know, and that is the end of it. 

“The mark of a living man,” Elio says. “My father always said that if there was nothing left for a man to learn, he should throw himself off a bridge.” Catching the twitch at the corner of Oliver’s eye, he hastily adds, “ -- Dad didn’t kill himself. Just in case you were wondering.” 

“I wasn’t,” Oliver says a beat too quickly. And then he assents, “Okay, so maybe I was. Can I ask how --” 

“Lung cancer,” Elio’s voice catches a little at the back of his throat. “He made me promise not to start smoking until my kids turn thirty.” 

“That’s kind of funny,” Oliver says. “I mean, I think it’s morbid. But the guy has a point, I guess. My old man smokes cigars. Those fat Cuban ones. It’s impossible to look cool smoking them. But he only does it during the holidays that don’t really matter. Like, he’ll sit on the porch and puff them through Labor fucking Day weekend.” 

Elio laughs, despite himself, “And you smoke cigarettes in staunch protest?” 

“Or just hey, that I was a stupid kid who thought death was cool,” Oliver laughs too. “I’ll take your interpretation over mine any day.” 

Then Elio remembers, and he unhooks his seat-belt to reach in the backseat. It’s a couple of tries before he can dislodge his duffel; it's the only thing that he's brought with him. Elio is not quite as impoverished as his passenger when it comes to worldly possessions, but it’s safe to say that he’s downsized plenty. He unzips the bag; inside are a few neatly-rolled bunches of clothes, an extra pair of jeans, some socks, his toiletries, and a few paperbacks. 

“I packed Billowy,” he says, unearthing the rolled-up polo underneath a dog-eared copy of Paul Celan’s _Der Sand aus Den Urnens_. It’s a first edition, one of Samuel’s, the one with so many typos that Celan himself recalled the collection out of embarrassment. “You can see if it fits you. It’s loose on me, so it might. Pull over.” 

Oliver blinks at him, “You packed what now?” 

“...Billowy,” Elio says. And then looks down at the fabric in his hands. It’s like he suddenly sees how its absurd. “It’s a shirt. My grandfather’s.” 

“You named a shirt,” Oliver says.

“Technically? Mom did.” Elio shrugs; it doesn’t seem as if Oliver has asked a question, but he feels compelled to answer it nonetheless, “She always called it Billowy, when I was little. Don’t you ever name objects?” 

“A stuffed animal. Maybe; it’s been a while,” Oliver seems unconvinced. “I don’t like names. I told you.” 

“Okay, well. It’s a shirt. It’s not haunted or anything, and it’s been washed.” Elio waves it at him, mindful that Oliver is still driving. “Here, smell it.” That’s something else Elio likes to think he does better than most kids his age: he knows his way around a load of laundry. 

“You’re not serious,” Oliver fixes him with a look. “...I’ll pull over.” 

 

Elio’s grandfather, or his mother Annella’s father was a giant of a man. He always stood out in family photos -- not that there were many; the story was that the man hated sticking out; if everyone stood up to pose for a photograph, he would insist on sitting down. There is one particular photo of him that Elio remembers distinctly, the one where he’s about five and he is sitting snugly in the crook of his grandfather’s neck with his other leg dangling off the angle of the older man’s elbow. It is worth noting that his grandfather hadn’t been wearing Billowy in said photograph. 

They idle in a parking lot in front of a closed hardware store and Oliver trades _Go Hornets!_ for Billowy. After running a hand through his hair, Oliver smooths his fingers over the collar. 

“...It seems to fit,” Oliver says, his voice also idling somewhere between impressed and something else. Elio can’t quite puzzle it out but then again, maybe it doesn’t matter. “...Too cheeky to ask if you have a pair of pants or whatever that might fit me?” 

“Too what?” The swerve in Oliver’s vernacular is momentarily jarring. It takes Elio a moment to realize that he does know what it means, but the other man is already moving to explain. Like his body is trying to come to terms with the ever strange turns of his tongue. 

Oliver starts, “Too.” He has to think, “Too much, too brazen. Cheek doesn’t seem to translate into American, does it?” 

“ _You’re_ American,” Elio fixes him with a long look. It isn’t too much of a stretch to think of Oliver’s face, with the hollowness of his blue gaze and the inviting line of his jaw, stretched out on the silver screen or perhaps just confined to the possibilities of television. 

“My fiancée was English,” Oliver offers. “She says I’m cheeky all the time. Guess it’s -- I don’t know, kind of stuck.” 

Words are long-lived on a person’s body and on a person’s mind. Elio knows that more than anyone. Most of the words clunking around in his own head are from Samuel and Annella. He’ll probably come to think of them as his own one day, but not today, not right now, in the company of a near-stranger who is clinging on to an alien word on his person. For now, Elio will relish the fact that he knows where his words are from. 

There’s probably something particular and peculiar, a reason why the fiancée-word is stuck where it is, but Elio doesn’t ask.

Instead, he asks, “...Can I see what she looks like?” 

“Yeah,” Oliver reaches for his wallet. He hands over a photo that’s not wallet-sized, as evidenced by the well-worn crease down the middle. 

Elio unfolds it after reaching for the light overhead. In the low glow of orange light, he finds himself staring at a blonde in a flowery sundress and a straw hat. For an English girl, her teeth are white and straight, too. His eyes are naturally drawn first to her breasts (ample, but still _polite_ ) to her hands; her fingers are bare, nails neat and lacquered. 

“...She looks like Barbie,” Elio says. He doesn’t think that’s an insult because it’s got to be something Oliver has heard before. 

“Believe it or not, people called us Barbie and Ken,” Oliver shrugs; he sounds wholly resigned. Then he holds out his hand, “Can I have it back now?” 

Elio turns off the light, and Oliver tucks the photograph back into his wallet. “What’s her name?” 

“Elizabeth. She preferred Liza. Like Liza Minnelli.” Oliver clears his throat. After that, he starts the car without asking and pulls them out of the parking lot. Then he stops, shuffles out his wallet again, clicks his tongue, as if he is satisfied with what he’s just checked, “Well, hey. It’s your lucky day. My student ID’s still good. Let me take you somewhere?” 

 

_“...Perlman? Uh. Spell that for me, please.”_

_“P-E-R-L- and then Man. You know, person.”_

_The registrar, a young-thirtyish man with thick horn-rims and a scraggle of a beard that is mostly desperation, makes a noncommittal noise, “Ah, found you. Elio?”_

_“That’s me. I’d like to take the next semester off, please. There’s been a death in the family.” (_ Another death _, more like, but that detail is burrowed inside, intimately against Elio's marrow never again to see the light of day. __)_

__

__

__

_“Says here you took six weeks off during your first year, too.” The registrar taps a few keys. The clacking of it, is deafening and takes Elio further and further away from everything he knows to be real --_

More clacking, right next to his ear. 

“Ahoy,” Oliver’s voice. “...Elio?” 

Elio clears his throat and shakes himself, “...Still here. I think.” 

Oliver reaches a hand towards him, but stops short, as if he isn’t sure where to touch. Strangers, after all, don’t really touch. Finally, he rescinds the gesture entirely and settles his hand on his own knee. 

“I’m sorry if I got to you, too much.” Oliver says. 

“That’s not important,” Elio shrugs. He looks around; they appear to have stopped in the middle of a parking lot with one or two other cars. Elio racks his brain and he can’t remember where they’d come from. Farther and farther away. “...Where’s this?” 

“It’s a parking lot, Einstein. Between the library and Schenley Park, not that that'll mean anything,” Oliver says. He takes the keys from the ignition and drops it into Elio’s lap. “Come on, take a walk with me.” 

 

“...I thought this place sucked out your soul,” Elio says. It’s evening, but the campus still seems buzzed, alive. Some contingent just rushed past them all lugging sandwich boards. 

“Yeah, but school does that, don’t it? The Texan is slowly tingling at the edge of Oliver’s words again. This appearance is less jarring than the last; maybe it’s something the man does for a joke, or maybe it’s a grounding thing. Like the sort of thing one might learn in therapy; _I am a rock in a sea of chaos and I will hold in the storm_. “...The rest of it is the good part, nostalgia. Whatever, you know?” 

Elio shrugs, “Wouldn’t know. I’m not done with school.” 

Oliver studies him. Really bores into him with the bright blues of his eyes like he is willing all of Elio’s skin to fall off his person leaving just his telling bones behind. Elio curls away from him and then he has to take a minute, to mostly put himself back together again. Oliver pretends not to notice any of this, “...How old are you, again?” 

“What do you mean again? You haven’t asked, and I haven’t told you.” Elio rakes a hand through his hair, mostly to shore up the bravado he doesn’t have. 

Oliver thinks, “Fine, we can play it that way if you’d like. I’m twenty-eight.” 

“I’m...twenty-five?” Elio tries. 

“Try again.” Oliver doesn’t even deign that with any consideration. He almost sounds bored, as if he's done this before.

“Twenty-three?” 

“I’d be more inclined to believe you if you didn’t end your guesses with a question?”

Elio doesn’t know why he’s lying anyway. “ -- Twenty.” He lets out a long exhale, “I don’t know why I lied.” 

“Self-defense?” Oliver suggests. “I mean, that’s something I get. Twenty?” 

“Twenty,” Elio affirms. “...Are those really bagpipes?” 

“Yep, they’re probably practicing for Homecoming but they’re usually packed away by six. Who knows,” says Oliver. “...Carnegie was Scottish. Probably homesick, poor sod.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, a huge thank you to slinusmarlevort for sharing insights on the CMU campus. I still can’t believe you guys have _bagpipes_. Throughout these two chapters (this one, and the next) I try to affect being at Carnegie rather than follow the details to the letter, hopefully I won’t muck it up too much! 
> 
> _Der Sand aus den Urnen_ (Trans: _The Sand from the Urns_ ) is a 1948 collection of poems by Paul Celan. Among the poems is arguably Celan’s most famous “Todesfugue” (“The Fugue of Death”) about the Holocaust. The collection was recalled by Celan and most of its poems were reprinted subsequently in Celan’s 1952 collection _Mohn und Gedächtnis_ (“Poppy and Memory”). 
> 
> “I am a rock in a sea of chaos,” is therapy babble ripped from an episode of _Law & Order_. 
> 
> Sometimes people ask about who I had in mind for Oliver-wife, or in this case Oliver-fiancée, have a visual of the stunning [Alice Eve](https://frostsnow.com/uploads/biography/2017/01/24/alice-eve.jpg). 
> 
> Chapter title taken from Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix’s [All Along the Watchtower](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY).
> 
> As always, thank you! I look forward to hearing what you think :).


	5. No Theory of Everything

“Why economics?” 

It’s odd to see Oliver like this. At home in his own version of a world, and yet it’s a world that scarcely seems to acknowledge him in it. Yet amazingly, the man still goes around so distinctly assured of his own existence. No one blinks twice at the fact that he’s wearing a billowing polo from the sixties and green corduroys. It’s like Oliver himself has forgotten what he’s wearing too. Or maybe the clothes have already become a part of him, seeping into his bones and his blood.

They lope around the Tepper building, where Oliver points out the location of his supervisor’s office, the corner that he used to curl up and cry (“not really, but I did have a panic attack once. Had to get rid of it with a rousing game of tennis.”) and the bike path that he used to take, which would lead him back to his student apartment in the predominantly Jewish suburb of Squirrel Hill. 

And then Oliver remembers that it’s past eight, so his favorite café in the nearby Posner Hall has since closed. After some indecisiveness (read: mostly Oliver mumbling to himself) they double back to this place called the Underground, where Oliver gets them ten chicken wings each to take out. The Underground is squeezed full of undergraduates trying to forget that it’s a weekday night and the whole space seems needlessly grimy, like a play on the world outside.

“Maybe I just wanted to be a good Jewish boy and please my parents,” Oliver says, chewing loudly. They’re now sitting on some stone stairs just past some yellow caution tape. It’d looked like the path had been courted off, but so far no one has come to shoo them away. “Does everything have to be complicated? Have a why attached?” 

“If you really wanted to be a good Jewish boy,” Elio starts, and the moment the words leave his mouth he wishes he could have a do-over. He’d make it sound less sarcastic, “If you really wanted to be a good Jewish boy, wouldn’t you not be...here?” 

“That’s one hell of a double negative,” Oliver sighs. He cracks open a can of pop and swigs. Like he thinks (or wishes) that it’s beer. “Alright, try this. It’s been six fucking years. A lot can change. Maybe I got tired.” 

“You upended your whole _life_ ,” Elio says. “Worth it?” 

Oliver shrugs. 

The chicken bones are piling up between them. There are now fifteen, sixteen chickens running around out there without wings. No, they are probably dead. Suddenly, Elio isn’t hungry anymore and he gestures at Oliver’s open can.

“May I?” 

“Dunno. Depends if you trust me. That I’m not diseased.” 

Elio thinks this over, “I have shingles.” For maximum effect he should have said “herpes” instead. Still, Oliver is reliably more protective of his can and curls his hand around it. 

“Isn’t that herpes?” 

“Not the sexual kind. And it’s not actually contagious unless I get a rash. I don’t have a rash.” Elio looks at him, “I was in a bad way when my father died.” It’s not like he really wants to admit something like that, but he _does_. 

“So you lied. You’re not exactly zen.” 

“So I lied,” Elio shrugs. “I was zen in my head and not in my skin. I owe you nothing.” 

Oliver’s face shifts, “That’s very Cartesian. No, I guess. You don’t.” He reaches for another chicken wing and gnaws into it. Really gives it his full undivided attention. “I don’t think of it like that, though.” 

“About what?” 

“If my life really has been upended. If it’s worth it.” Oliver shakes it off, whatever it is. He holds out his can, “Here.” 

Elio hesitates, and then drinks. “...Do you think about going back?” 

Oliver is gathering up the chicken bones in a bunch of oily napkins, “Not yet. Give me some time, won’t you?” 

Listening to his better judgment, Elio says in lieu of anything else, “We should get going.” 

“After I show you the giant penis in the sky. It’s the campus’s pride and joy.” 

 

They leave behind Carnegie Mellon, this time with Elio behind the wheel. 

Oliver asks if he can roll a cigarette, and Elio makes him dig out one of the paperbacks in his duffel, in an attempt to not get tobacco everywhere. The man assents and spreads Elio’s copy of Sebald’s _Austerlitz_ across his knees. 

“Are we driving all night?” 

“We can do,” Elio says. “I’m not tired. Sleep if you’d like.” 

“I’m fucking _wired_ ,” Oliver holds the cigarette up to his mouth and puts his tabacco away. “Doubt I can. Where are we going? And don’t just say west.” 

This time, Elio doesn’t hesitate, “My mother’s ashes are being held by a funeral home in Yakima, Washington. Would you like the zip code?” 

Oliver quiets, “...You had her cremated?” 

“I didn’t have her cremated, but yes. She is, was. Cremated.” 

“But aren’t you Jewish?” Oliver frowns, and his eyebrows furrow in several places. 

“We were Jewish in terms of our genealogy. My father’s mother was Jewish. But I think my parents were both human beings before they adhered to any religion. She wanted to go back to the earth in only a small way. Burying her body would have seemed something like selfishness to her. That she was taking up room. Mom wanted to be dust. Dust and air. Dad donated his body to medical science.” 

“O.Kay,” Oliver sucks heartily on his cigarette, “Don’t take this the wrong way, dude. But your parents are really weird.” Then, “Here, have a puff.” 

“No.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because I might want children one day and I promised.” 

But the scent of tobacco wafts throughout the car and Elio’s mouth so itches. Still, he is determined to hold on. Although it doesn’t sate his sudden oral fixation, reaching to fiddle with the dial of his radio until he finds the classical music station. Some nondescript bangy piano sonata that may be Scarabin or not. 

The performance must have been live, because the end of the piece is greeted by scattered applause, the way that any audience would when they’re listening to something contemporary written by a Russian. 

“They’re dead, though.” And because Elio is getting to know Oliver just a little bit, he knows now, that the bluntness isn’t meant to be mean-spirited. Instead, it’s come from a place of personal unconscious insecurity, and a desire to subvert what the man probably sees as stringent Jewish traditions. “It’s not like they’d know.” 

“God,” at least Oliver’s bluntness draws a mostly unwilling laugh from Elio’s throat. “Don’t you understand anything, Oliver? The living only disapproves. The dead can haunt you. They can make certain that you never close your eyes again.” 

Elio doesn’t add that he knows this from experience. 

Oliver blows smoke directly into his face, “That’s the most morbid thing I have ever heard. Have a puff. It won’t kill you.” 

“I am going to send my parents’ ghosts after you,” Elio says, as he gives in and plucks the proffered cigarette out of Oliver’s hand. He takes a puff, coughs. 

“I will ward them off with the deep disapproval of my still living parents; they’re not gonna know what hit ’em,” Oliver retorts, “Or ward them off with this shirt.” He pulls Billowy’s collar up right next to his nose and inhales. “Billowy does smell nice.” 

 

Oliver falls asleep, somewhere between the car passing the signage for Sandusky, Ohio and pulling into the nearby town of Clyde. So Elio figures that the man will be asleep for a while and parks the car in the empty lot of a Family Dollar store. As a show of faith, he leaves the key in the ignition. Well, that, and Elio doesn’t want Oliver going claustrophobic on him or anything. He has a bad feeling that the man just might, and unlike some of the other things his gut tells him to do, this one costs him nearly nothing. 

It’s nearly three in the morning, and the town is asleep. Still, Elio knows this city, because Samuel had driven them through here before his presentation in Minneapolis. Being a trained archaeologist more than anything else, it feels strange, he’d said, not to do any fieldwork. So it was that the Perlman family traipsed around town trying to find any trace of the fact that this small sleepy place might have sued an author for slandering their town. They hadn’t found any grotesques, only discontented people, and a lulling newspaper archive in the library basement. 

Now, toeing the steel of the rail track, Elio recalls the smell of the basement. Old, stifling, full of cardboard boxes and the smell of the permanent marker long faded, but could be willed back into life if one had a willing enough experience, if one even wants to give in that deeply to the mundane. 

Somewhere behind him: “Don’t scare me like that, okay? Running off.” 

Elio stiffens, and then wills himself to relax again. It’s only Oliver, and when he turns around again, he knows that to be true. 

“You were asleep. And I only wanted to look around for a couple of minutes. Figured it couldn’t hurt.” Elio gestures, “Even left you the keys.” 

Oliver spins Elio’s car keys around on his fingers, “I guess you did. Where’s this?” 

“Clyde, Ohio. The last place we ever went on vacation as a family,” Elio says. 

“Some vacation,” says Oliver. 

“I’ll make it even better, we spent the whole time in the library.” 

“I’m having a breakdown of envy.” 

“Laugh,” Elio says, a little edge to his voice, “But I.” 

“I’m not laughing,” Oliver says. There is something in his voice, it’s changed; he reaches forward and takes Elio’s wrist and somehow it’s suddenly like they are not strangers anymore. It’s funny how these things happen. “...Take all the time you need.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to: slinusmarlevort for her CMU insight and forgiving the travesty of chicken wings. The penis on campus does exist! It’s this. 
> 
> Special thanks to PillSlayer for double checking the accuracy of me writing about shingles (which actually are a type of herpes). 
> 
> W. G. Sebald’s 2001 _Austerlitz_ is a gorgeous novel about historical places that we’ll never see.
> 
> Call back! After _Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life_ the town of Clyde (on which Winesburg was based) was very unhappy. They’ve since embraced this notoriety. The notion of “grotesque” is explicated in the introduction to the collection. 
> 
> Chapter title is taken from Manic Street Preachers’ People Give In.


	6. Milky Winter Disorder

_“Oliver wait. Stop, stop. I said_ stop _.” Nails, digging into his shoulder._

 _The first thing that comes to his head is_ I’m relieved not to be doing this anymore _. Oliver even thinks of it exactly like that, an island sentence which rebukes his nakedness, his bullheadedness as he is still leaning over Elizabeth’s -- Liza’s -- body. Try as Oliver might, it’s oddly difficult to think of her as the way she wants him to. Liza doesn’t seem to be any part of her body. The name shirks away from her perky breasts and shapely legs, and that’s why Oliver can’t seem to touch any part of her body without thinking about --_

 _“Eliz -- Lisza. Liza,” he trips over it every time. “How many more times are we going to fucking do this? You can’t tell me that you_ like _this. This who stupid shit that we’re trying to erase with all this fucking --”_

“You’re hurting me,” a voice says. Not Liza’s voice no. Someone just a touch boyish still, to the point where even his larynx are not sure where to turn. “You can let go of me now.” Then, “ -- Hey, hey, Oliver? I’m talking to you. Let _go_ of me!”

And then he’s back. Brown green eyes bear down on him, even though Oliver can still quite comfortably look down at Elio from the tip of his nose, he now feel as if the opposite is just as apposite. As he lets go of Elio’s wrist, the boy jerks back, as if the touch between them has burned him.

Trying for levity, Oliver says, “...Still attached?” 

“More or less,” Elio rubs his wrist like he’s making sure. “You okay?” 

Maybe it’s because Oliver is from a certain _kind_ of family, the sort of family he has never figured out as being strange and oppressive until he’d gone to school, mingled with the other children (then students, then colleagues). _Okay_ seemed to carry, for him, a certitude of untruth. 

And yet somehow, this kid with his two dead parents, is asking him if he’s _okay_. 

“Yeah,” Oliver shrugs for emphasis. “Fine.” 

But they are standing on the train tracks and part of Oliver is wondering about the train schedule. That’s the good thing about trains, one can always expect them to be coming. Or going. It’s kind of strange too, to be jealous of trains knowing where they’re going, never having to think about it. 

“In that case, we should probably get off the tracks,” Elio says. “C’mon. It’s only a couple of minutes to the library.” 

 

The Clyde Public Library is...a library. It’s an old stone building with a rounded archway entrance with wide white-painted double doors; the coat of white even looks halfway fresh. The library’s open times is posted beside the door, along with a poster proclaiming the upcoming Family Movie Night, showing _Finding Nemo_ at seven P.M. Friday Evenings (Refreshments provided.) 

“I’ve never seen _Finding Nemo_ ,” Elio peers at the poster. 

“Seriously?” But as soon as Oliver’s said it, he realizes it’s not that weird. What’s weird is that the kid remembers a vacation to a library in Nowhere, Ohio as fondly as he does. But then, the parents’ being dead probably has a thing or two to do with it. “...Never mind, it’s probably not as weird as my having seen it.” 

“...Yeah? How come?” 

The memory is embarrassingly _normal_. Which is probably why Oliver desperately wants it to not be, “I was babysitting some kids. And also on a date.” 

“Double duty, I like it.” Elio’s mouth lifts at one side, “How did you get to the cinema?” 

“The cinema?” 

“The, oh.” Elio takes a minute, “Did Liza not teach you that? The movie theatre.” 

“Cinema. Movie theatre. Right, I’ve heard that before. So you’re English too, huh?” There’s no trace of anything non-American in the kid’s voice, but Oliver finds that he isn’t too sure about anything, nowadays. “English, Jewish. Whatever else are you hiding?” 

“ ‘M not _hiding_ ,” Elio says. “I’m just. I guess you could say that we’ve been all over. I think we’re a bit Italian, German, and Irish too. What’s more American than that?” He pauses, as if trying to He pauses, as if deciding to press the issue; what comes out is ultimately telling: “I mean, you can kind of count that as really Jewish too, no? God’s people spread throughout the whole of the Earth and that.” 

“Point,” Oliver gives in. “Anyway, _as I was saying_ , I give you a juicy morsel of information, and what you get hung up on how I get to the movies.” 

“I _like_ details,” Elio returns. “Makes the story more believable. It does not make me hung up.” 

“It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not,” Oliver says. “It happened. As you like, she got her sister to drive us. We relieved her of babysitting duties and I don’t know. Maybe she had a crush on me.” 

“Cute,” Elio grins at him nearly baring all of his teeth. “Then?” 

Oliver shrugs, “Then nothing, one of the kids choked on popcorn or probably licorice and maybe we had to take him to the hospital. I was grounded for a month and the girl never spoke to me again.” 

“...So the girl wasn’t Liza?” 

“God no,” Oliver laughs in spite (or is it despite?) himself, he’s never sure. “I don’t even remember her name. It was something weird. Mostly vowels? Elizabeth and I were never sweethearts. I like to think we did things right. With just the right amount of transaction.” 

“I...have no idea what you just said.” Elio says. 

“It’s,” there’s a moment, a still, cogently clear moment in which Oliver thinks that he ought to explain to Elio what he means. But then the moment passes, so he can’t. He doubts anyone can understand this shithole that he himself, Oliver, has gotten himself into. It is not as if he’s got anyone else to blame or depend on. It all seems so fucking fair, “Never mind. That’s me being strange. Again.” 

“Again,” Elio echoes. “Sure.” 

Oliver doesn’t even begrudge him his sarcasm. Is it sarcasm? The kid really does play everything close to the vest. Because humor served him so well the last time, Oliver finds himself trying again: “...So. I’m guessing you _don’t_ want to wait around until seven tomorrow? It’s a really harrowing movie.” 

Elio fixes him for a long look; manages, “Fuck you.” wearing one of those fuck-off smiles. “ -- I mean, no. I’m done with memory lane. Want to get moving.” 

“Okay then,” Oliver straightens up and makes to lead them away. The sudden surge of confidence comes out of nowhere and no one is more surprised by it than Oliver himself. It’s probably not got a long stay and it’s that. It’s that that puts a spring in his step, “Let’s get going. _Carpe diem_! There’s no time like four in the morning.” 

 

Elio insists on driving again, but Oliver makes them stop for coffee and barely warmed through hot dogs at a rest stop once they’d entered Indiana. 

The rest stop’s Greasy Spoon is literally named Greasy Spoon ( _Best Coffee on the Original Route 24!_ ) and the waitress who serves them looks about sixteen. She also had a black eye that was still visible under layers and layers of foundation. Not that Oliver knows much about foundation. He only knows that Elizabeth buys loads of that stuff, and that it’s expensive. 

Elio, on the other hand, has looked right through the waitress and is burning a hole through his hot dog. The intensity of his gaze is almost impressive and makes Oliver flinch.

“...What? Stop looking at me.” 

“Nothing, I have just. Never seen anyone stare at a hot dog with such burning ire.” 

“I’ll burning ire you,” Elio says wryly. Taking up a plastic fork, he pokes his hot dog like it’s some sort of science project. Questionably edible, “...Do you think this is heated all the way through?” 

“Is this one of your details things, again?”

“No, this is more of a try not to die of trichinosis thing,” Elio deadpans. “I don’t think I can be too careful.” 

Oliver’s mouth is full, but he swallows, now more than a bit mindful that he might have just (inadvertently) become a prime candidate for trichinosis. Causally, he nearly swallows all of his coffee in one go. He points his chin at the waitress “If you _really_ want to have some fun, who’s to say what we’re eating is really pig? Maybe it’s horse and I’ll get to feel good about myself.” 

Elio thinks, “It’s probably mostly husk. Which is more dodgy than horse. Do you keep kosher?” 

“When I was younger,” Oliver shrugs. “You’re really busting it out with the English vernacular there, buddy. Aren’t you worried that I’ll get PTSD?” 

“To get to post traumatic stress disorder, don’t you have to get through the trauma first?” Elio says. However, he does clam up when the waitress comes by to get them more coffee. 

Oliver sucks in a deep breath, “I think life’s one huge trauma. You don’t get out of that, until you kick it.” 

“That’s just Herodotus rephrased.” Elio’s mouth twitches, “What’re you expecting, some applause?” 

Oliver sighs, “So it is. Don’t you ever wonder how anyone managed to live after the Greeks? They took everything good.” 

“Not...everything,” Elio pokes at his hot dog again. The next time the waitress comes around, he asks if he can have some hash browns after making sure they’re made out of potato.

“Um, I think hash browns are made of potato,” the girl says. “I mean. I can check with the kitchen?” 

“You do that,” Elio says. “Please.” 

“No, actually, don’t do that,” Oliver horns in. “Just get him his hash browns. I’m sorry my friend is grumpy.” 

That makes the girl laugh, “You’re both really funny.” She leans in, enough to make sure that her breasts have touched Oliver’s shoulder, and then backs away again. “I’ll get you some hash browns too.” 

_“About yesterday,” Oliver says. The scene: a kitchen laboring under graduate student stipends. Shiny linoleum. “We should…”_

_“Please don’t say talk about it,” Elizabeth returns. She’s dressed for work with one shoe on. It’s a shoe with a heel, which means when she straighten up she looks like she has a limp. When she touches her mouth to the sensitive skin just below his ear, he thinks she smells strongly of potato._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is taken from Belle and Sebastian's [I Want the World to Stop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd4QMN_lErc) which could be taken out of context or not. Thanks for reading!


	7. Traveling Light

Upon leaving The Greasy Spoon stuffed with the extra hash browns that they probably shouldn’t have gotten courtesy of their waitress, they have an argument about who should drive. It plays out, not exactly like an argument as _such_ , but more like a filler discourse, trying to make time overstay itself. Oliver doesn’t really get it. It’s not like he hasn’t driven the kid’s car in a safe manner before. But whatever, he will respect the ownership of Elio’s car. It is this respect that leads Oliver to suggest a coin toss, which he rigs like he’s been doing it all of his life. 

He has, kind of. Nearly. He’s come to think of it this way anyway, that it’s not cheating in the usual scheme of things, if he can write down the math behind it, explain how it works. 

“Heads,” Oliver says. “I drive.” 

Elio only looks at him, “...I don’t know what you think you’re trying to prove,” he says, like he is saying something else, too. “But okay. Drive.” 

And just like that, the victory feels hollow. But Oliver gets behind the wheel anyway and turns the key, as not to feel worse about it, “...Sometimes, you’re a bit of a dick, you know that?” 

Elio’s mouth barely moves, though Oliver is sure that there is a twitch, somewhere. “I’ve been told that, yeah.” The luminous green numbers of the clock face reads 05:23. “...Are you going move anytime soon?” 

“Dick,” Oliver says again, and this time, he smiles. It genuinely makes him feel better. He backs them out of the spot and pulls onto the road. The sky overhead is still dark, but if he squints there is starting to be beginnings of sunrise. The colors are waking up. 

“Asshole,” Elio’s responds just as fluently. He leans in over the driver’s console and in one smooth motion, plucks something from Billowy’s breast pocket -- a folded napkin. “You’re also an asshole for not checking this out.” 

Oliver makes a face, “Check out _what_ , exactly? Her number?” 

Elio makes a show of unfolding the napkin, “I’ve never had anyone leave me their number. This is the nonchalance of a _privileged_ man.” 

There’s something about the way Elio rolls his tongue around _privilege_. the strange, lingering pause that draws out between the aspiration of his p’s and the soft somehow knowing rhotic of his r’s that stilts Oliver’s veins and shorts his breath, “I really don’t know what you mean.” He shrugs, “If it means so much to you, then open it.” Oliver doesn’t think he’s privileged, but he knows that a lot of people must think that -- make the definition of being so narrow and alienated to oneself so that an individual must stand staunchly against it to cure himself of a lifelong disease, the cancer of self-and-not-self. 

Elio does, unfolding the napkin with a sober reverence that reads more like irony than anything else. He reaches for the light overhead and squints, “...I can’t read it. Her name starts with J. -- that’s all I got.” 

“Give it to me,” Oliver holds out his hand. 

“You’re driving.”

“It’s just a name and a number.” When Elio finally does hand it over (and not happily), Oliver smoothes out the napkin again for himself and squints. After a second or two, he says, “It says ‘Jeny, One ‘n,’ inexplicable.”

“I had a Jeny in my art history course last year,” says Elio. “It’s not that inexplicable.” 

“ -- Where’d you go again?” 

Elio inhales, “Columbia.” 

“Wow,” Oliver says. “That’s impressive.”

“Not really,” Elio returns mildly. He’s settled back comfortably in his seat, one palm pressed against his cheek. “My parents were legacies, both of them. So they probably wouldn’t have let me in for no other reason than me being stupid as fuck. I’m a lot of things, but not that, so _voilà_!” 

There’s a bitterness in the kid’s voice, Oliver thinks, one that’s both alien to him and familiar. Alien, because neither of Oliver’s parents are legacies of anywhere worth mentioning, but if they’d known that an Ivy was a possibility for their one and only progeny, they might have scrimped and saved every penny under the couch and taken out a second mortgage to pay for a goddamn fucking library alcove in fucking Princeton. Actually, no, they would have preferred somewhere not-New Jersey, because it is important to note that Oliver’s parents belong to a specific class of New Englander: those who are not below (or is it above? Oliver can never remember) irrational dislike for The Garden State for not being part of the in crowd. 

But they would have been okay, Oliver thinks, with the other two members of the HYP triangle along with Elio’s Columbia. Not that it is Elio’s Columbia precisely, but anyway. 

Oliver says, “I didn’t mean to,” and stops. He has no idea how to finish his sentence. 

“...It’s -- fine,” Elio rubs hard at the skin on his cheek. “Can we just not...talk about it?” 

“About Columbia, sure. No more Columbia talk,” Oliver somehow manages to refold the napkin and stuff it into the left pocket of the corduroy pants that he is wearing. While he is warming up to them (a little), Oliver hasn’t quite yet graduated to thinking of his hobo-charity getup as _his_ but that’s something else that Elio has pointed out sensibly enough: that his clothes aren’t him. He turns his eyes back onto the road, although there isn’t much to look at. Naturally, Oliver redirects most of his attention to his periphery, where he finds that Elio is staring more intently than anything, at his cuticles. 

 

A silence passes between them. It is daylight now and the quiet seems to pile on like a person was being slowly suffocated one layer of down feather at a time. So it seems to Oliver by the time they pass a sign signaling Fort Wayne, Indiana at the next exit, that the silence has stretched on in Elio’s car for at least a thousand years. 

Elio, on the other hand, seems to have taken full advantage of the silence and has fallen asleep. In sleep, the haphazard lolling of his head and the evened rhythm of his breathing betrays his boyishness. A boy alone in the world. Or if he isn’t, he sure is acting like it. 

Without thinking too much on it, Oliver takes the first exit to Fort Wayne. He doesn’t know much about the city, except once that it was the answer to a rather odd _Jeopardy!_ question under the entirely boring designation of “U.S. Cities.” The answer to “Where is Fort Wayne, Indiana,” so enunciated by a middle-aged accountant had been “A city today known to us as the center of the American defense industry, but once, prized for her pride of place on a much-contested confluence, has been occupied by everyone from the native Miami tribe of American Indians to the British.” 

He drives them to a Quality Inn located next to a Home Depot, where a bored clerk stares at him as if he’s got two heads when he asks for a double smoking room but with two twin beds.

“We uh, don’t do that anymore, bro. And also we don’t give out rooms until two in the afternoon. That’s early check-in.” 

“Listen,” Oliver begins. But as soon as he starts, he is forced to admit the reality of his situation. The only respectable thing about him for the moment is his Oxfords (and his degree, but that’s hardly tattooed on his forehead). “ -- Okay. I get it, it’s a bit unusual. But come on, you run a hotel near a university.” He’d spotted signage for Perdue’s Fort Wayne campus at the last intersection, “ -- This is not the weirdest you’ve seen.” 

“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” the guy says, a little bit interested and maybe (Oliver hopes) slightly less difficult. 

“I’ve worked in a bed-and-breakfast in New York,” he’d looked after their books rather than worked reception, but it’s not as if working reception is rocket science. “Come. I’ve been driving all night, yeah? Exigent circumstances.” 

Here’s the thing that Oliver has learned about people: if you appeal to their curiosity just a little bit, give them a nudge out the door of their egoist existences, they do the rest of the work. “...You a cop?” The guy says.

“I thought about it,” Oliver admits. “But no. Can I have the room now?”

“I saw a cop once,” says the guy, taking his credit card and handing over a set of keys. “Man really liked his doughnuts.” 

“That’s nice.” 

“You’re in 402, that way,” the guy waves his arm vaguely towards the right-hand side of the building. “There’s a couch. There’s a breakfast too, continental spread starts from seven in the morning...goes until ten, I think. Dunno why it’s called that, North America’s a continent.” 

“Thanks,” Oliver says. “You’re a real pal.” 

 

At this point and time yesterday, Oliver had been in a nondescript apartment inexplicably in the middle of Manhattan. He’s always thought to himself that if he ever made it to New York, he wouldn’t have been let into the borough much less be in the thick of it. 

By the time Oliver gets back into the car and drives them to a closer spot near 402, Elio begins to stir.

“Why have we stopped moving?” 

“I thought you’d like to sleep in a bed,” Oliver says. “Besides, it feels weird for me to keep driving when you’re asleep in your car.” 

“...Why?” Elio rubs his eyes. “If you can’t stand to be alone, then turn on the radio. I wouldn’t have minded. I’m a heavy sleeper.”

“No one sleeps like the dead,” Oliver says. “...Too soon?” He affects it lightly enough, but he thinks that he and Elio have now entered into the strange landmine territory sometimes tread by authors who are immediately aware of the strange intimacies of goings-on between men: a spectrum that might as well start with “you’re a real pal” delivered sardonically and end wherever. 

“No,” Elio agrees. “And the dead have got nothing but time. Do you ever think about that?” 

“Sometimes,” Oliver shrugs. “I was thinking that I could also use a shower.” 

“And change into what?” Elio looks him up and down. “You _donated_ your clothes.” 

Despite the wary tone of their conversation (if Oliver is really honest with himself; _this_ \-- whatever _this_ is, he still doesn’t know -- is becoming not unfamiliar and maybe that isn’t a bad thing) they are moving in tandem towards Room 402; which says nothing, except that maybe they share the same sort of practicality. Oliver moves towards the trunk as Elio clutches his duffel.

“ -- Forget it,” Elio says. “There’s nothing in the trunk.” 

Oliver raises an eyebrow, “...That’s all you got?” 

“That’s all I got,” Elio meets his gaze. “I’m traveling light. That a problem?” 

“It’s not a problem; it's _au revoir_?” Oliver tries. He enunciates it with as much Americana as he can manage. Three syllables. 

“It’s pronounced _au revoir_ ,” Elio says in the reductive French and plenty of continental snobbiness to boot. “What the fuck.”

“It’s a song. Leonard Cohen?” 

Oliver unlocks 402. He gets what he expects. A clean enough, no-nonsense space with decade old furniture. The air smells vaguely like stale cigarettes and there is indeed a couch. 

“Oh,” Elio pauses to close the door after him. “I always get him mixed up with Leonard Bernstein.” 

“ _How_?” Oliver holds back a laugh, but then he doesn’t have to try so hard, once he sees Elio’s face. “...Never mind. Have the shower first. I’m going to roll one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title and the song discussed near the end is [Traveling Light](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okaqXB6Ns5s) by the ineffable Leonard Cohen, who I once mixed up with Leonard Bernstein and I don't think my friend's done laughing at me since. 
> 
> Fort Wayne Indiana, aside from having an interesting history of occupation and having made it out of the rust belt thanks to the defense industry, is also notable for housing the second-largest genealogy collection in North America, which is housed at Allen County Public Library's Fred J. Reynolds Historical Genealogy Department. Probably not going to make it in here in any great detail, but it's a fun to know according to the confines of this fic. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me so far!


	8. Against the Physics of My Passed Down Last Name

Elio hesitates, “...You sure? You’re the one who wanted a shower.” 

“Like you said,” Oliver shrugs, gesturing at himself, “You’re the one who has something to change into.” His mouth works in the wonky, unconfident, and yet still inviting way that goes against everything Elio thinks about him. “Much as I like you, Elio, I’m not prepared to wander around in my birthday suit while we give Billowy a turn in the laundry.” 

Despite himself, and everything in his nerve endings that tells him not to, Elio turns to look at the other man, who has already made himself comfortable on the couch with tobacco and skins laid out on the provided table. By the way Oliver is leaning precariously on his elbows, Elio would guess that the table legs are uneven. He wonders how they got to be that way. 

“...What do you mean?” 

“What do I mean what?” Oliver glances up again. “Don’t tell me, I have to explain ‘birthday suit’ to you.” 

“I know what that means,” Elio says a little defensively. “It’s just. You like me?” 

Oliver’s hands stutter at that, and he seems to take a minute, collect himself. “I already like the way you say things. Why not?” He holds Elio’s gaze for a moment too long, long enough for guilt or guile to enter into it and Elio looks away, quickly. 

“Anyway,” Oliver says. “Take a shower, have a nap. I’ll have my smoke and see if we can’t replenish my wardrobe. You’re -- you’re not in a hurry, are you?” 

“...What, you mean, since my mother’s just waiting for me in an urn in some funeral home I have plenty of time?” 

“No.” Oliver doesn’t even flinch. It’s funny that he’ll flinch in front of some impressionable waitress over some hash browns but here, it’s hardly the same man sitting in front of him. “I’m honestly asking. But I can see now, how that might have been offensive. I’m sorry.” 

_Smell comes alive in his father’s study like a piece of fine theatre. First, is the leading lady: the cloying scent of tobacco that’s since earned the forgiveness of the familiar. After that, a Greek chorus of wood varnishes and unobtrusively scented candles, a hint of a wifely hand. These days, he’s come to hate the cloying smell, but it doesn’t go away. In time, maybe the cloying smell will be replaced by other smells that are just jostling at the door, the inevitable stench of sick -- or maybe the smells of the various drugs that’d been given to his mother by the hospice nurse who’d ridden home with them from the hospital._

_“...Dad?”_

_His father looks at him and nods. Tries to smile, and for the first time the weak curve of his lips doesn’t reach his eyes._

_Yet for the first time, Elio finds that he is afraid of the study. Afraid of what it means if he steps foot in here. Afraid of what it might sound like if his father, this stranger, speaks._

_“Can I come in?”_

_His father nods. Maybe he knows too, what is in his son’s head because he doesn’t speak. Elio steps into the room and closes the door behind him. He kneels by his father’s feet and takes his father’s hand. Samuel Ethan Perlman, a long-lived man, has hands so skinny that his veins now run thick and blue across pallid, stretched-over skin._

_Elio feels a hand settle on his head and he presses his nose against his father’s -- Samuel’s (somehow, it is easier to think of his father as a name, fully himself) -- and kneels. “I don’t want you to die. I don’t know if I can --”_

A foreign sound cuts across the room, making its way through the threadbare carpet, the faintly yellowed edges of the sagging pillows on the double bed, to the edge of the windowsill looking for cracks through which it might escape. The sound, because Elio is a certain sort of aesthetician, is _ugly_. Shrill. Then he discovers, in that strange inward way that the sound was -- and is still -- coming from his own throat. Crawling out of his larynx like unwanted cockroaches. 

He breathes in, and breathes out thickly, full of snot. 

“Jesus,” Elio says. 

“Jesus,” Oliver echoes, but not in a mean way. Elio hears him getting up from his perch on the couch and he thinks he knows Oliver now, by the smell of faint tobacco that clings to him. “Hey, Elio, I didn’t mean to -- come here. Okay? Just come here.” 

Elio does not know himself to be a fragile person, but he goes, and Oliver’s arms are strong and solid around him, almost like glue. 

“I’m sorry,” Elio says again. He hiccups into Billowy and it feels all nearly familiar. “ _Fuck,_ I’m…” 

“It’s okay,” Oliver says. He shifts, so that Elio’s head is tucked neatly under his chin. “I mean, it’s not. But you know. It’s okay. I’ll shut up now.” 

Oliver doesn’t let go for a long time. 

 

Later, when all the tears have been ostensibly being _wrung_ from Elio in a way he didn’t know was still possible for him, he hiccups again, making another ugly sound. 

“...Okay?” Oliver says, very softly. 

“Probably not,” Elio admits. “You know, I’ve done this already. All of this.” If Oliver doesn’t feel like moving, then maybe Elio doesn’t feel like encouraging him to change his mind. Maybe. 

“For your dad,” Oliver agrees. “But your mother?” 

“Is that what you call yours? Mother?” It’s a weak deflection at best, but Elio’s got to try. If he thinks any more about this, how close death is to him all the time, then he might as well fall apart all over again.

“She always seemed like a ‘Mother,’” Oliver shrugs. “A bit far away from me. I know that’s weird.” 

Another silence. Elio finally finds enough of himself, and he pushes Oliver away. The man lets him go without saying anything. 

“I just. Sorry.” 

“Don’t be. But now we really have to give Billowy a run in the laundry.” 

Elio can’t help but laugh. Billowy now has a large snot-stain near Oliver’s armpit. It feels good to laugh, but it also feels strange. “...Still like me?” 

Oliver mirrors his grin. A bit lopsided, “Sure. Of course.” 

“Enough to kiss me?” Elio says this before he really thinks it through, and he already regrets it. He watches as Oliver’s cocky grin fades, but only a minute, and then it’s back again -- but it’s not the same grin as before. Now it’s just vacant, a placeholder grin that buys Oliver time as he figures out what to do next. 

“ -- I.” 

“I’m joking,” Elio says. “Really, you don’t have to.” 

Oliver fixes him with a long look. Elio thinks about avoiding his eyes, but this becomes impossible the moment he deigns to try. Oliver’s blue gaze is everywhere and fills up the room. 

“Then why’d you say it?” 

Elio feels red creeping up to the edge of his cheeks, he thinks too, about rubbing his cheeks to waylay its coming, but he remains still. It’s a truth that he has to remind himself from time to time, and every time he does, in his father’s voice rather than his own, he comes to the realization that he has nothing to be ashamed about. “...I wanted you to. Also it’s something my mother said once, that if you ever wanted something from somebody, you shouldn’t ever keep it to yourself. She says wants like that could fester like a wound, like you could die any moment for not having spoke.” 

“Wanted?” Oliver says, “I mean, there’s a lot I could do with that. But I’ll stick to wanted, as a question. You said wanted, that’s different from want.” 

Elio closes his eyes, “Want. I want you to kiss me.” 

 

_“Look, Oliver, there’s mistletoe!”_

_“...I see that, it’s practically dangling in front of my nose. I might sneeze.”_

_“You are very tall,” she peers up at him. “Don’t you know who I am?”_

_“Sure,” The formula is about the same every time: youthful bravado, a crooked smile, eyes that girls just want to fall into, “You’re one of the Elizabeths. There’s at least three at this party. My friend pointed them out. But you were first.” Said friend is nowhere to be found, but that is neither here nor there._

_“ ‘S why I go by Liza. Like Liza Minnelli. I’m not a girl likes to stand out much,” she shrugs. She’s blonde, red-lipped, long-legged. He can tell that she -- Liza-like-Liza Minnelli has a formula too, and maybe it hasn’t failed her yet. “But you could have at least tried. Ask me if I want to be kissed.”_

 

The way Oliver has always known of want, is the way it causes disorder and panic in polite society. One could want a lot of things, but it’s a lot more fun to want things when people tell you no. This is true in the fresh decades of the new millennium and was true when the likes of Austen and Brontë were trying to make the marriage plot sexy despite all the damn rules. 

There’s something about the way Elio says _I want you to_ that sends a lovely crawl across Oliver’s skin, in spite of -- well, everything. Their circumstances; the cigarette smoke that’s in this motel room; the fact that Oliver can probably smell moth balls, if he really puts his mind to it. 

He finds himself saying, “...I wouldn’t mind.” Because Oliver doesn’t; the sentiment is surprising to him too, but its unforseen coming doesn’t take away from the fact that such a want has now joined them inexplicably, like their rib cages have been fused together. 

“You look unsure,” Elio says. “If it’s not something you want --” 

“Maybe it’s not that simple.” Oliver counters, “Maybe you’ve shown me something new, that I never thought I could want.” Then, realizing how that too, could have been taken in a negative way, he hurries to correct himself. “What I mean is, I probably wouldn’t want -- too. Too, if you were not you.” 

“You rhymed,” Elio tilts his head forward, as if digesting that particular detail above all others. 

“So I did,” Oliver seems to have lost the ability to breathe. His reply is meant to have come off a little cocksure and diffident, but the way it’s come out is neither of these things. 

They are still kneeling on the carpet, but Elio scoots towards him. Now, there is no distance between them and Elio fills up his vision. 

“I would not ask or want,” Elio says. “If you weren’t you, either. I’m not so good at rhyming. I think it’s childish.” 

“It’s nostalgic, rather,” Oliver says. “I had a teacher once that told me that rhymes were how words felt a little less alone.” 

“That’s absurd,” a little laugh. “Dad would have liked that.” 

“Stop it, you’re ruining the mood.”

“I don’t want that,” a thumb presses against Oliver’s mouth. “Close your eyes.” 

And Oliver does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rhyming thing is from an elementary school teacher of mine - she taught us rhymes by telling us to help words find friends. Have adapted it here, but I've always loved it for how kind it is. 
> 
> I have lots and lots of things to say about the Regency Marriage Plot, the Gothic fear of such marriage plots, and the order they all try to up-heave and maintain. But for starts I'd just like to recommend Franco Moretti's astounding work on [the Bourgeois and literature](http://review31.co.uk/article/view/158/the-way-of-the-world). Happy to ~~stumble through~~ I mean, clarify anything that's interesting or unclear! 
> 
> Chapter title taken from a line in "Why?" by Torpedo or Crohn's. If you're interested in a link, there's one in the first chapter. 
> 
> As always, a big thank you!


	9. Two Lonely Persons

“Wait, wait,” Oliver says. Real words, that cut across Elio’s carefully curated phantasma of his desire. “You’ve got...shingles though, you said. You sure you’re not contagious?” 

In a way, Elio thinks that they’ve already kissed. They’ve shared a cigarette and sips from a can of coke. Before he can protest, Oliver follows that up with, “...I’m kidding. I guess I’m nervous. That’s not funny, is it?” 

Oliver’s eyes are still closed and when Elio touches his mouth again, the man stays still, “With an attitude like that, it’s a wonder how you’ve kissed anyone. I don’t have a cold sore or anything, or even cooties.” That’s meant to be a jab, but the other man remains perfectly still, not even a twitch of indignance in his mouth. 

“I’m guessing I do miss out on a lot,” Oliver assents. “If I really think about it, I hardly know why anyone would want to kiss me.” 

Elio drops his hand. He suddenly feels silly, but not ashamed. There’s a distinction in there somewhere, but to parse it out takes real energy. “...Sure. We can do that instead. Talk about the merits of kissing and stroke your ego. You’re _good looking,_ Oliver, for start.” 

“...I’m just tall,” Oliver says, again pointedly avoiding the possibility of irony. “I’m told that counts for a lot. When I was a kid, I used to have this stutter, it was awful. Folks nearly sent me to a speech therapist...but then they decided they didn’t have enough money to spare for something like that, so they shoved me into a latchkey play. I was Prince Charming. It was no contest, because no one else had tried out for the part. I think Cinderella was actually offended.” 

Because Elio thinks that it might be rude to enquire whether Cinderella was anywhere near as good looking as Oliver, he trades in the question for something less offensive. Which is to say, boring: “And were you? Charming, I mean.” 

“I was _hot_ ,” Oliver intones dryly with his eyes open now. “Sizzling, supposedly.” And yet the two voiceless alveolar fricatives lined up sided up side by side does nothing to trip up the man’s tongue. Elio is beginning to think that he prefers alliteration to rhyme. “...Not stuttered a day since. The nerves fixed me right up.”

“Kind of like George VI.” 

“Like who, now?”

“The Queen of England’s dad,” Elio says. “They’ve made made his speech impediment into a movie. Did you know, if you listened to really loud music to the point where you can’t hear the sound of your own voice, you supposedly don’t stutter?” 

Oliver’s mouth twitches, “Sounds like Berkeley’s at it again. If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound if no one is nearby to hear it?” 

“It makes a sound,” says Elio. “It has to. Because by the some token, if a man were to close his eyes and fall asleep, nothing would exist.” 

“You,” Oliver starts and stops. 

“What?” 

“Nothing,” Oliver unfolds himself and stands. “...Do you mind if I take the car?” 

“I guess I don’t mind,” Elio shrugs. Part of him feels silly and the back of his throat is starting to burn. He swallows. “Will you come back? Or is this part of your long game, stealing my car?” 

Part of him expects Oliver to laugh. After all, the man is astoundingly cool, and also astoundingly sad, and maybe a million other things. But Oliver only weighs the keys left on the crooked table and shakes his head, “I think I’m in a little deep just to run away. Don’t you think?”

“I mean,” Elio weighs the words on his tongue like Oliver weighs his keys. “You did run away from a wedding.” 

“I,” Oliver’s face shifts, as if he is trying to figure a way out. “Okay, low blow. But I deserved that, I guess. But,” he pockets the keys. “As long as we’re on the subject, I want it on the record that I walked briskly out of my wedding. The wedding. I didn’t run.” 

“Yeah, okay. I believe you.” 

Elio doesn’t why he’s said that. Maybe because he likes playing this game, plucking bits and pieces of sentiment that he’s almost certain the other man would want to hear. But Oliver’s eyes do this thing, this _boring_ into him that all the once makes Elio feel both small but also full. Then Oliver reaches out towards him and touches the top of Elio’s head, nestles his long fingers almost curiously against the give of Elio’s curls. 

“I feel like I exist a little more now,” Oliver says. “I’ll be right back.” 

Elio inhales deeply and holds his breath until the moment when he is alone again. 

 

Oliver drives a near-stranger’s car away from the parking lot of the Quality Inn and wonders about the state of his life. At the moment, it doesn’t feel like anything is _real_. Action reaction, The rise and fall of the Dow Jones, which basically dictated and still dictates the rise and falls of other people’s everyday lives, even though most don’t even know it. Even something as simple as a breath -- inhale, exhale -- has its close twin and remains ineffably and indelibly part of something _else_. 

_“...Do you do that a lot?”_

_“Do I do what?” She -- Liza -- (thinking of her as ‘she’ is, Oliver remembers, reductivist but perhaps not sexist) tangles him up, in pretty ways that she’s probably done to lots of other boys before him. But Oliver isn’t like any of the other boys if only because he doesn’t really think about how he might measure up. He_ does _entertain notions of how a person might measure up in a broader sense, but he finds that he is only concerned with how his versions of himself might measure up with hers. Like with everyone else, within minutes of knowing him, Liza is already sizing him up and forming an opinion. He can’t very well help it, Oliver thinks, if he’s unduly interested._

_“Ask people to kiss you.” He’s managed that without a stutter. Perfect ten out of ten oration, not even a hiccup._

_“Just shy people, I suppose.” Liza takes his hand and tucks it against the back of her neck._

_“I’m not shy,” Oliver says. “Maybe a little quiet. But that’s only because I think other people have more interesting things to say.”_

_“That makes you sound depressing. Do you have depression? I hear that’s very hip now.”_

_He shrugs, “I don’t know.” Her skin is girlishly soft and well-maintained. Not that Oliver is any great expert on girls in a certain way, but he’s now nearly certain that Liza has a night care routine that she keeps to like a religion. “Would you like to find out?”_

“...Out.” 

Oliver blinks. He finds himself face to face with a guy sporting a bad shave and a band t-shirt. Oliver doesn’t know the band, but he’s wavering between grunge and prog-rock, the kind that never makes it out of your well-meaning uncle’s garage. “Pardon?” 

“I said,” the guy snaps gum loudly. “You don’t want to be pawning that thing and then finding it’s like a family heirloom or something. We had a few customers find that out before. And man.” 

“You’re a pawn shop though. Shouldn’t you keep my stuff until I come back?” There’s the niggle about Oliver wanting to leave Fort Wayne after tomorrow, but that’s neither here nor there. 

“You’ve never been a pawn shop before, have you?” 

“Never mind. I just want to sell this watch,” Oliver says. “And trust me, it’s not a family heirloom.” 

“Well, okay,” the guy swipes Oliver’s watch from the countertop and peers at it. “...Are you in some kind of trouble?” 

“Why would you ask that?” 

“Dunno,” the guy pops his gum again. “This is an expensive watch.” 

“I know. I expect at least five hundred for it.” The watch had been a present from his parents, given not so much with love, as with the pressing caveat that they’d had to delay their cruise to Norway or someplace by a whole six months. It’d cost more than five hundred dollars. 

“I don’t think I even have a hundred dollars in the till,” the guy says. He pops open the cash register and squints, “Nope. Definitely not.” 

Oliver waits. When the guy still doesn’t do anything, he sighs. “Um. Okay. Can you get more money? Like, from a bank account or something?” 

“I’ll have to close while I go to the bank,” the guy shuts the cash drawer. “This is the time when the traffic starts to get heavy.” 

“There is nobody in here,” Oliver’s mouth is starting to itch in tandem with his building anxiety. “Tell you what, I’ll standing outside and smoke while you go to the bank. Or I can man the register why you go. You can take the watch with you as collateral.”

 

Even though Oliver is not exactly expecting the guy to follow through on the watch-as-collateral idea, he somehow _does_ and Oliver finds himself stuck behind the counter of a pawnshop that practically begs to be put out of its misery. Five hundred dollars, he thinks, is a lot of money, but maybe this place is dying for a cash injection. Oliver takes good care of his things, the watch could easily go for more. 

After that, he goes into one of those dime-a-dozen clothing outlets to grab jeans and a handful of t-shirts and a sweater and underwear. A lot of it is subject to a student’s discount and the girl who rings him up barely looks at his identification. She is, however, feeling chatty and Oliver lies about going on a cruise to Norway near the end of the week. 

Then he drives back to the Quality Inn where Oliver feels all of the sudden self-conscious so he has his cigarette outside. 

Elio is sprawled out on his stomach on the bed farthest from the door. There’s a towel draped over his head still and the curve of his spine is somehow still inviting. The sweet antiseptic soapy smell finds a way to cling to him without seeming cloying. 

Oliver goes and sits by the foot of the bed and puts his hand around Elio’s ankle. 

“You’re back,” Elio murmurs sleepily. 

“I am.” 

“Did you think about running away?” 

“Nope.” 

Elio moves his foot and Oliver thinks that there’s a distinct moment in the motion where both of them are aware of breaking off contact. Like some sort of trust, very nearly.

“Why don’t you go take a shower? I’ve left you some soap.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title taken from R. M. Rilke's notion of love: "That’s love: Two lonely persons keep each other safe and touch each other and talk to each other.” Which is so simple, but breaks my heart every time. 
> 
> The movie that Elio references about George VI is _The King's Speech_ which I still love. Also relevant to this story is that George VI only ascended the throne after the abdication of his brother. 
> 
> Berkeley refers to [George Berkeley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley) who wrote extensively on subjectivity. The 'fallen trees in the forest' problem depends on if you believe in Bundle theory (which says no, because all existence is contingent upon sense data or what we can perceive) or Substance theory which understands an object as a thing-in-itself and separate from the properties that we can perceive from it. Elio, for obvious reasons, prefers substance theory. 
> 
> As always, a big thank you!


	10. Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?

They drive away from Fort Wayne, Indiana the next morning, after partaking in the included Continental Breakfast with free refills of tea and coffee. Elio chewed on a croissant and pronounced it not very good, but he’s still careful to lick crumbs off his fingers. There’s a part of Elio that envies and wants cleanliness. 

“To be fair,” Oliver notes. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a good croissant.” 

Elio looks at him as if the man has suddenly contracted leprosy, “...How have you never had a good croissant?” 

“Whoa, okay. It’s too early in the morning for you to judge me that hard,” Oliver puts up both hands. 

“You’re _driving_. Fucking hell, Oliver.” 

“Look ma, no hands,” Oliver says, putting his hands back on the wheel. “Relax. I _am_ a good driver, and I have proven myself to be trustworthy.” 

At the mention of Oliver being trustworthy, Elio feels a burning sensation near his ankle. He leans down to scratch, “ -- I’m serious though. You’ve never had a croissant.”

“A good croissant,” Oliver interjects. “Pretty sure that there’s a difference. For what it’s worth, I’ve never really gone in for pastry.” 

“There’s a place near us,” Elio says, and then he stops himself. “Well, just me, now. I guess.” There’s a prickle at the back of his eyes, but he is determined to ignore it. “But yeah, there’s a place. I learned to make croissants from the guy. He’s from Lyon.” 

“...Is Lyon particularly famous for pastry?” 

Elio shrugs, “Don’t know. Ludo uses an insane amount of butter though. That’s probably what makes it.” 

Oliver thinks for a moment, “There’s probably a joke or two in there somewhere, but maybe I better not.” 

“Why not?” 

“Are you seriously asking me that?” The clock on the dash ticks past nine and the sky over their heads is overcast and probably pregnant with rain. 

Elio sets his jaw, “I want to know.” 

Oliver sighs, “I was going for death by clogged arteries _et cetera_.” He stares gloomily ahead. The weather is looking like it’s going to go awful at any moment, kind of like foretelling the mood in this car. “But you know, I try not to speak too badly of people.” Along with that, Oliver tries not to think too much about everything else going on. He remembers when it used to be easy -- bearing his soul, parts of himself -- to a near stranger. Except now, Elio is not so much a stranger as a being who has managed to worm deep inside of Oliver and make him exist in spite of himself. Now, his footfalls are weighed, connected to something and Oliver feels like dragging his feet. 

“Why didn’t you just say?” Elio presses. The pressure builds at the back of Oliver’s head, just like a headache that’s not so unfamiliar now. “What do you think I’m going to fucking do? Jump out of the car?” 

Oliver sighs. He rolls down the window and fumbles for a cigarette from the pockets of his stiff new jeans. He’s always hated new clothes, the way they don’t fit. “For the record, I don’t think you’re suicidal or anything. I just. Maybe I don’t want to talk about death all the time. Okay? -- Light me?” 

That’s meant to be an olive branch, but doesn’t seem to have worked. Elio clicks the lighter and then plucks the cigarette out of Oliver’s mouth, takes an inhale for himself, and sticks it back. 

Oliver doesn’t say anything. 

“...I’m going to turn on the radio,” Elio says. “It’s probably good if we check the traffic. I want to make good time today.” 

“Sure,” Oliver shrugs. “Do that.” 

He smokes quickly and flicks the cigarette butt out of the window. It is starting to rain. 

 

They stop for some gas and a bite to eat in busy Peoria, Illinois after driving for nearly five hours. The rain has let up, in accordance to the slightly lifted mood in the car, but everything is still damp.

Still, Elio insists on eating at a riverside joint, and chooses The Blue Duck Barbeque Tavern for the excitement of eating inside of an abandoned rail depot. Maybe Oliver has been in New York too long, but he finds the whole idea more gimmicky than imaginative -- though he finds it hard to argue with the fried dill pickle chips that they’ve just been served as a welcome. From the corner table where they’re sat, they’re even not too far from a window so they can stare at the river view, even though given the sudden cold, Oliver doesn’t think the view is much. 

Oliver orders a pint of the Belgian White on tap, and Elio settles for a cream soda. Oliver watches the kid’s clever fingers crack open the can and he thinks -- 

“Did I do something to piss you off?” 

Oliver says, “What?” 

Elio shakes himself, “What I said.” He laces his fingers together, but not until he’s neatly shred the kraft-colored napkin in front of him. “Did I do something to piss you off?” He can certainly think of a few things -- like asking Oliver if he’d like to kiss, or breaking down in front of him, or. All very _human_ reactions, one would think, but that’s something else that his mother told him once. That a lot of people merely sleepwalk through life without opening their eyes once. 

The other man doesn’t meet his gaze, and when their drinks come, Oliver smiles his stupid smile at the waitress who rolls her eyes. Good for her. 

Oliver gulps his beer noisily and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. For the moment, Billowy is bunched up in a plastic bag in Elio’s duffel, and Oliver really should feel worse about the way he’d stuffed the charity trousers under the couch. At the same time though, he’s able to appease himself with the thought that the cleaning staff have probably dealt with much worse than a pair of unwanted pants. Sure, it might generate unwarranted mythos for a while but what Oliver doesn’t know won’t hurt him. 

_“I’m sick of this,” Elizabeth’s -- Liza’s hands are shaking. “I don’t want to do this anymore, Oliver. You, just_ smile _through everything. What the fuck are we even doing?”_

_“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”_

_She huffs, “I want you to say it once. And you can even say it’s my fucking fault that I wanted to keep it, and that we don’t have to do it now. You -- you don’t even like me.”_

_Some part of Oliver should have been relieved, but everyone is bits of themselves; seldom is one person complete and in-sync in and of themselves, in fact, it almost never happens. Plato, for one, has Aristophanes suggest in his famous_ Symposium _that humans used to have four arms, legs, and a two-sided face adorning one head, that humans might spend a lifetime wandering about for their other half. The idea has been long disputed and long displaced by ideologies that have accepted the human as lonely beings._

_“I like you,” he protests, probably a touch too late for Liza’s liking, but it suddenly seems to Oliver the only thing for him to say. It’s easy to ignore the prickly warning signs in the back of his head and throw himself into it. “...I -- I love you, even.” (he guessed, but there is something about educated guesses and how one felt if one scored the intended goal -- there’s nothing quite like it, the high -- which is why most people would advise against doing something stupid like that, but Oliver is so used to having that dissonance as part of his conscious that he just does it. Says the words like they are not even words attached to deeper meaning._

_Liza stops and her gaze suddenly has a light to it. Like she’s hopeful, somehow. “We’ve not fucked it up?”_

_“We kind of have,” Oliver says. “But you know we.” He takes her hands and runs his thumb over her knuckles. Everything about her is so_ pretty _, put together. Even now. The light in her eyes brings light into his soul and it is, as if everything has hit its second wind again. “ -- We can try it again, Liza.” (See, there are times when Oliver doesn’t stutter, and in the nick of time, too. “However you like, I can even go out and buy a ring tomorrow.”_

“You didn’t --” something catches in his voice and Oliver quickly clears his throat. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I just. I was wondering if.” 

Elio’s gaze doesn’t move. In fact, his eyes are so still that one blink my bring back the dead. Oliver sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It’s been ages since he’s gone without hair gel and he is beginning to wonder if he ought to start over, “...You didn’t do anything wrong, or say anything wrong, I was just thinking, is all. Maybe we should call it quits here. Whatever this is. Me riding along. What are we calling this?” 

“Do we always have to call whatever something?” Elio asks. He follows Oliver’s gaze towards the view of the river. He’s always liked rivers, lakes, but not oceans. “Do you do that?” 

“I worked in a bank for a while,” Oliver shrugs. “One thing I learned was that people get less anxious when you called whatever something. Even if it’s a bad thing, say, like a financial crisis. Everyone knows what to do in the face of a crisis once you learn to call it that, even if what they have to do isn’t -- always the easiest.” 

Elio has never known his parents to be in any financial hardship, and that’s never been something that he’s felt bad about. Crises around _chez_ Perlman always seems to hold an abstract quality, like a ruined pizza dough, or what it means when people understand themselves as substantiated by God. 

Finally, Elio says, “...What would you do?” 

“I’m sorry?” 

“I mean,” Elio lifts one shoulder to lessen the weight. “...If you don’t keep driving around with me. What would you do?” 

“This is a big city,” Oliver shrugs back at him in sort of a lopsided-mirror way. “I could do anything. Disappear. I like to think I have options.” 

“But is that really what you want? Yesterday, you were so happy just to exist.” 

For a long moment, Oliver doesn’t say anything. Then he drinks more beer and taps a dill pickle chip against his mouth. “ -- Can I ask you something?” 

“Ask,” Elio says. “I have nothing to hide.” And in that moment, he’s armed with the certainty of his father in his veins, that it must be true. 

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” 

 

Oliver still doesn’t understand Elio. But now, he thinks he feels better now, because maybe he’s not meant to. There’s a comfort in the unknown, even if he can’t quite put it into words. The kid will sit there and shred a napkin but now and then, there’s that gaze of the dead, again, perfectly still. 

“...Do you really want to know?” 

“Yes,” Oliver says. 

“Why?” 

“Maybe it’ll give me courage,” Oliver looks down at the top of the glass. “To not want to disappear. To exist again.” 

“Okay,” Elio says simply. After that, he flags down a waiter and asks about holding the table for ten minutes or so, while the two of them go and fetch something from the car. The guy tells them to go ahead. Oliver waits until Elio gets up from his seat before he follows suit.

Elio unlocks the car and swings his duffel onto the top of the trunk. He unzips with a flourish and dumps out all of the bag’s contents. Mostly books, Billowy (crumpled), socks. A prescription bottle filled to the brim with trapezoid-shaped pills. Elio plucks up the bottle and tosses it to Oliver, who catches it on reflex, even though he isn’t paying real attention. 

“I bought these from a boy in my dorm.” Elio says. “So I guess, it's not the worst thing I have ever done, but the worst thing I will do. Bet that’s surprising to you, hey? I was going to swallow them all at once, after I said goodbye to my mother. I’m so tired of being alone. Maybe -- I don’t know, I was thinking I could say goodbye to you, too. But you know, that’s silly. You don’t even know me. But that’s still what I want. Do you understand, Oliver? Do you understand me now?” 

Oliver says, “Jesus Christ,” but then he puts the prescription bottle on the top of the car again and reaches for Elio’s hands. At first, the boy almost makes to pull away but then he doesn’t. Oliver just holds his hands, squeezing his fingers, waiting for his blood to come back into his blue veins. They've got nothing but time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, all. Sorry this took a bit longer than usual but I had a bit of trouble trying to get things to sound the way I want them to! I’m still not completely convinced by this, but I figure I’d get it out there before I drove myself nuts. This thing now has a definitive ending but the editing might take a while. 
> 
> Chapter title is taken from Peter Sarstedt’s iconic 1969 hit “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely), about a girl named Marie Claire who is from backwards Naples, but might not be happy as she thinks she ought to be with the European jetset. I think it fits in very well with how Elio and Oliver understand or try to understand their respective loneliness. 
> 
> The trapezoid pills (trazodone) are real - I just wanted something a bit unusual and of course I don’t condone what Elio wants to do. Thanks to @PillSlayer for double-checking my Google skills. 
> 
> If you want to read more about humans as substantiated by God (or through God), check out Baruch Spinoza’s idea of substance monism. It might come back, I don’t know. Also, if you’re a theologian/philosopher and think that I’m getting this plain wrong, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
> 
> Peoria, IL is the seventh most populated city in the state and boasts a lovely riverfront and a boatload of history. It is one of the oldest settlements in Illinois and became a British settlement (as opposed to being French) after the French and Indian War. 
> 
> As ever, a big thank you for reading!


	11. An Unbearable Lightness of Being

“...Could I kiss you now?” Oliver asks. The words seem not to be his, somehow. 

Elio looks at Oliver’s mouth, and then his gaze slides down to their still joined hands. He can feel the lively warmth of the other man’s palms, and yet he can sense it too, the way Elio’s own blood rushes cold, as if to ward off Oliver’s liveliness in fear and youthful cowardice. “Are you just saying that because you think it will stop me from killing myself?” 

“I could say no,” Oliver shrugs. “But then it wouldn’t be honest. Only if you’d like me to. Think about it like the kiss of a lifetime.” 

“The last kiss that I’ll ever get. Never so polite, nor so alive. Ever again.” 

Elio’s eyes slip closed and Oliver lets go of one of his hands to touch Elio’s face. Elio is careful to stay perfectly still is not the sure touch of a man mired in practical crisis. Quite the opposite, this seems to be the touch of a man who isn’t sure of anything but the ephemeral nature of how one human touches another. 

“Go on then,” it feels strange, having to be so bold about such a little thing. A kiss is over in seconds, if that. “Kiss me, Oliver.” 

 

The truth is, that Oliver has kissed a lot of girls in his time. Maybe it’s not worth mentioning, but he has never kissed a boy out of the opportunity never rising, rather than, say something 

It’s always seemed easy and he’d never really thought about it in any great detail. It’d seemed enough, that a girl was available and wanted to kiss him -- and a part of him knew better, that it was it was probably more complicated than that, but what’s important is that _he hadn’t had to think much about the kiss and its particular specifics at the time_.

And now Oliver thinks about it, and it seems absurd and even laughable that he has never taken the time. With time, and with thought, Oliver sees every part of Elio. What makes him not only a figment of someone else’s imagination but fully formed as his own person. 

The kiss is over in a moment. It’s prim. Oliver doesn’t linger and Elio doesn’t open his mouth, for fear of giving up his loneliness. 

But the kiss has changed something fundamentally between them, even though they’re both too shy to give it words.

“Better now?” Oliver says.

“I need some time,” Elio replies, his stare a thousand yards deep. “And some food. I’m starving.”

 

The restaurant is fuller than when they’d last stepped inside but the waitress, despite her annoyance with them, has elected to treat them with professional deference instead and they get to keep their table with a view. They order, opting for too much food rather than too little, and Oliver asks for a refill of his beer.

“They don’t give you refills for _beer_ , Oliver.” Elio twists his mouth in a way that’s only made less severe by the life that seems to come back into his eyes. “It’s not a filling station.” 

“I haven’t heard anyone mention a filling station in _years_ ,” Oliver shoots back. He thinks that he knows how this works now, that elitist prickliness is in truth, yet another way to avoid saying things -- things that are really important. “I think they knew what I meant, don’t you?” 

Elio shrugs, a touch petulantly. He bites his lip and looks towards the view of the river, “The rain’s gotten worse.” 

“I wouldn’t worry about it. We ordered tons of food.”

“Suppose we did.” 

Oliver sighs, “Who’s the other Elio, then?” 

Elio blinks at this, “What?” 

“When you were telling me your name,” Oliver clarifies and finds himself grappling for a time. It’s almost funny, because it couldn’t have been more than a couple of days ago, even if he can’t put his finger on when, because a lot has happened since then. “...You said there were two Elios. One was the novelist. The other?” 

“You remembered that?” 

“Elio is not a name you hear everyday,” Oliver doesn’t know why he feels the need to defend himself. 

“The other Elio is a Paul Elio,” Elio says. “Some schmuck who invented a car. Or, not even, a companion to the family car.” 

“A what? That makes cars sound disabled.” 

“Trust me, it looks nearly as ridiculous as it sounds,” Elio reaches across the table, palm up. “Let me see your phone.” 

Oliver thinks about arguing, but he doesn’t. He hands over his cell and watches as Elio thumb the screen. 

“Thirty-two missed calls,” Elio peers intently, the intensity of his gaze seems to slide off the phone like some sort of hydrophobic surface. “Not to mention like a hundred text messages.” 

“A hundred,” Oliver can’t help himself. “Really.” 

“Yeah, look.” 

A hundred and three, actually. It takes Oliver a moment to remember the number of RSVPs to his wedding. Never mind guests on the day because he is now of the opinion he wasn’t awake enough to take responsibility for his actions. 

“Anyway, here’s the Elio car. Companion car,” Elio thrust the phone at him again. 

“Right.” For whatever reason, Elio is going to let to go and Oliver isn’t going to question why. Perhaps Elio suddenly remembers that he ought to be a credit to his parents during his final days on God’s green earth. “And...Paul Elio expected people to drive these on the street.” 

Even with the low resolution of a phone screen as an excuse, Oliver doesn’t think the problem of resolution can even contend with the absurdity that is the Elio car. The thing has got three wheels and whoever the inventor of the Tuk-tuk is, maybe he’d better get in touch because Oliver thinks he can smell patent infringement at least a mile away and he is a banker. Some trainee consultant should have lost his job. 

“I hear the whole thing is stuck in development hell in Berlin,” Elio says. 

“I’ll regret asking, but...uh, why do you know about this?” 

“Dad started getting ads for it,” Elio shrugs; the levity he holds in the gesture must weigh heavy like a stone. “God knows. We don’t have Alexa or anything. So we looked it up.” 

The conversation looks like it’s just about to kick it again, and Oliver thinks to himself that he’s never had any real trouble not mentioning his parents if he doesn’t want to. He’d led Liza to believe his parents were dead. It hadn’t been particularly funny when she’d found out but in the grand scheme of things, they’d gotten over it like nothing. 

But at the same time, Elio isn’t like anyone whom Oliver has ever known before. To put it simply, the man hasn’t anything or anyone to run away from. Not a partner whom he has tricked with beginner’s luck via an attractive first impression (or so it seems), and certainly Oliver can see now the germination of a father’s wisdom and a mother’s love on his person and his soul, moreso than anything else Elio could hazard to be on his own.

He’d make an awful novelist. In fact, after the death of both of his parents, one wonders if Elio could conceivably carry on living. He’d decided not, if the pills are anything to go by, and Oliver knows from his two years as a dormitory hall R. A., where he’d been given mental health awareness training, that the presence of the pills was one step up from normal “suicidal ideation” and therefore required careful observation. 

Their food arrives presently, a sticky mess of pork short ribs, crisped up burnt ends lathered in barbeque sauce. Oliver takes refuge in his fresh pint of beer while Elio gingerly spears one of the ribs with his fork. 

“Use your fingers,” Oliver demonstrates, “Seriously. It’s not like I’m in any position to judge you. I’m not a moralist when it comes to man enjoying his grub.” 

“I just don’t like being dirty,” Elio says, which is as good an excuse as any. “And do you really not judge me?”

Oliver suddenly doesn’t think they are talking about niceties and politeness that should be observed while an individual is eating barbeque, “Is that what we’re talking about?” He drinks more beer, just in case. 

“I. I don’t know. We could. If you think that it would clear the air.” 

There is, despite the fact Elio professes to enjoy cleanliness, a spot of sauce at the side of his mouth. Oliver motions with a napkin. After a moment, Elio wipes his mouth.

“I’m no good about talking about these things,” Oliver says. 

“Which is why you haven’t returned your thirty-two voicemails and your hundred and three text messages.”

“Now who is judging whom?” 

Elio clatters his cutlery on the side of his plate. And then he tears into a rib with his hands, like an animal starved. With his mouth full, he says, “Not judging you. Just wondering if it would make you feel better.” 

Oliver drinks more beer. He’s mindful that he can’t really keep up this pace, “Did it make you feel better? Telling me?” 

“It made sense,” Elio says. “I know that’s not the same.” 

 

They get another motel room and Oliver offers to let Elio have the bed. And then he goes into the bathroom and turns on the tap. He doubts Elio is listening through the wall, but paranoia is hard to shake. Oliver clings to paranoia like Elio clings to loneliness. Even to be driven to suicide by his loneliness because he thinks to himself that he must be lonely. 

His cell phone rings and rings until it doesn’t.

“Hello?...Oliver?” 

Oliver resists the urge to hang up, “Hello, Elizabeth. Liza.” 

There’s a pause, a blank space, as he can see her looking for a place to sit down, fumbling for her cigarettes. She’d been smoking a pack of day since they started to plan the wedding. Since she doesn’t have anything else to worry about.

“You’re not dead,” she says.

That’s not the response Oliver is expecting, but all things considered, it’s good enough. 

“That’s a big leap from…” he trails off, “Okay. I deserved that. But no, not dead. Nearly died once, though.” 

Liza appears to not have found this funny because on the other end of the line there is just dead silence. Oliver thinks to himself that he’d liked her because she’d been no-nonsense and funny. And then she hadn’t been, but that hadn’t really surprised him either, because Oliver is familiar enough with that sort of thing, when marriages turn sour. When I do’s inexplicably turn into I fucking _don’ts_ , nope, didn’t sign up for that shit no way, _et_ fucking _cetera_.

If anything, he thinks that he’s done Liza a pretty big favor. 

“...You’ve not been arrested, have you?” 

“I’m calling you from my cell phone,” Oliver says. “Can’t very well do that if I’m in jail.” There’s a lot more to be said about her lack of faith, but he thinks to himself that it’s not a bad guess. Maybe she wasn’t expecting to hear from him again, ever. 

Oliver and Liza might be estranged, but they are far from strangers. He can still, with a bit of patience, picture her smiling with the side of her mouth. If he were close to her, it’s a roll of the dice, whether he can keep himself from poking his thumb into her dimple. The dimple only appears when she smiles. 

“Point,” she assents. “So. What can I do you for?” 

Oliver freezes. He doesn’t know, but it’s not like he can say that, “I’d like to see you. Not to get back together or...you know, something namby-pamby like that. I know you hate that sort of thing.”

“I also hate knowing how Mrs. Havisham feels after her wedding day.” 

“Ah,” Oliver opens his mouth and closes it. “That. It wasn’t. I didn’t.” Third time the charm -- inhale, exhale, “...This is probably not going to make you feel any better. But I didn’t plan it. I just couldn’t. It was my guts turned inside out. Not...you, exactly.” 

“I don’t feel better, but I don’t feel worse, either.” 

Oliver shrugs helplessly, “Sorry. Of course you don’t have to see me. You have the right.” 

Now she laughs, and his guts untwist themselves, ever so slightly.

“You forget, Oliver, you’re not the only one who is a glutton for punishment.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone has had a nice New Year's and holidays! I am still behind on comments but I should get to them soon -- really feeling the love, and thank you all for your patience! I've missed writing this and have had a lot of fun going over things and come what may, this should be finished by March at the latest.
> 
> Chapter title is from a novel by Milan Kundera, but the content of the novel and this have little else in common. Spot the Dickens, and I shit you not guys, but [Elio](https://eu.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2018/05/11/paul-elio-says-his-unique-3-wheel-car-debut-2019/602065002/) is a car and it looks completely ridiculous. 
> 
> Until next time! xx


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